Laguna Beach fans can’t wait to go back, back to the beginning, but according to Lauren Conrad not all of her castmates were automatically on board for their highly anticipated reunion.
“A lot of people were hesitant,” Conrad, 40, exclusively told NewsPlop at Roku’s The Reunion: Laguna Beach premiere on Thursday, March 26.
Conrad, who was known as “LC” to fans of the MTV series and her high school friends, said she had to intervene to help get everyone in the original cast to agree.
“I had a call with Christina [Schuller], Morgan [Olsen] and Lo [Bosworth] and they asked really honest questions,” Conrad recalled. “They were like, ‘We all live pretty quiet lives. Do we want to do this again?’ We just really talked it out.”
The LC Lauren Conrad designer acknowledged that “everyone had really healthy hesitancies” after their lives as teenagers at Laguna Beach High School were thrust into the spotlight in 2004 when the show premiered.
Once everyone was back together, Conrad told Us there were no regrets.
“Walking away from the days that we shot, everyone separately got emails and texts being, like, ‘That was so great. I’m so glad we did it,’” she shared. “It was a really positive experience.”
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In 2004, fans were introduced to Conrad and her group of friends — mostly seniors with a few juniors — on season 1 of Laguna Beach.
The original cast included seniors Conrad, Bosworth, Schuller (whose married name is Christina Sinclair), Olsen (whose married name is Morgan Smith), Stephen Colletti, Trey Phillips and Dieter Schmitz. The juniors featured were Colletti’s girlfriend — and Conrad’s romantic rival — Kristin Cavallari, Talan Torriero, Jessica Smith Evans and Alex Hooser, who now goes by Lauren Olsen.
Conrad and Colletti, 40, and Schmitz returned for season 2 of the show as they still had ties to Laguna Beach. The junior squad, now seniors, also came back with a few new faces including Jason Wahler. Season 3 of the show had an entirely new cast, including Lauren’s sister, Breanna Conrad.
More than 20 years after the show premiered, and made fans near and wide want to grow up in coastal California, the OGs reunited to film The Reunion: Laguna Beach for Roku, premiering on Friday, April 10.
“It’s been so nice to see her,” Lauren exclusively told Us of reuniting with Cavallari, 39, and burying their past grievances once and for all. “You know, she lives in Tennessee, so we don’t ever run into each other. We don’t have excuses to see each other. But this has been such a nice experience.”
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Cavallari was in total agreement, teasing that over the past few months both women realized they “actually have a lot more in common than we both probably thought. And I’m sure, the world has thought as well.”
While Lauren, an executive producer on the project, was excited to get back together with her high school friends, she told Us on Thursday that a return to reality TV is not in the cards. (Lauren also starred in the spinoff The Hills from 2006 to 2009.)
“I don’t do a lot of reality. It’s hard for me,” Lauren confessed at the reunion event at Santa Monica’s Shutters on the Beach. “I know how the sausage is made, like I just, I can’t enjoy it the same way.”
The Reunion: Laguna Beach premieres on Roku Friday, April 10.