There she stands, gazing into a Los Angeles shop window, musing on life in reality TV. “I’m just glad I don’t have to deal with all the drama,” she says. “I mean, it’s fun to watch, but I’m glad it’s not my life. I’m actually a drama-free person.” A drama-free person? Apparently, the Teutonic power-bitch whom millions watch traipsing over coworkers and prompting catfights is not the real Heidi. That one’s a character, carefully assembled from the provocatively edited, microscopically observed bits of social minutiae that form MTV’s hit reality show The Hills. So who is this surprisingly tiny 21-year-old in a lavender jersey and white True Religion jeans? What is this Chanel-bag-toting entity that seemingly occupies three dimensions? This being whose morphing body parts and imminent entry into pop music command magazine covers and headlines? There’s no polite way to put this. Heidi. Are you … real? “Am I real?” she says, squinting up at Blender. “What do you mean?” Then she laughs, glancing back at her reflection in the window. “Yes!” she says. “I’m alive! I’m not an alien. I exist!” We’ll have to take her word on that. She is envied, she is reviled, she’s the icy velvet-rope princess who launched a thousand blog rants. Yet Heidi Montag is a particularly slippery form of celebrity. On The Hills, she is a part of the semi-real reality show’s baroque symphony of eye rolls, hair twirls and sound bites. “It’s a show about looks,” she says of The Hills. “The faces, the expressions — they tell the whole story.” The story goes something like this. Heidi and Lauren moved to Los Angeles together. They had awesome jobs, went to the hottest clubs and were just super supportive of each other. But then Heidi starting dating Spencer Pratt, who, like, brainwashed Heidi so she wouldn’t hang out with her real friends, and then Lauren said Spencer leaked rumors about a sex tape that Lauren made with her drunk psycho ex, Jason, so Lauren stopped talking to Heidi but hooked up with Spencer’s BF Brody, which made Spencer start beefing with Brody, and then Jason started trying to get back with Lauren, so now it’s like, whatever. This is your brain on The Hills. The concept is, more or less, a post-teen, post-written-word Sex and the City. Narrated by 21-year-old Carrie Bradshaw stand-in Lauren “L.C.” Conrad, the show follows the adventures of a few young girls as they launch their careers. But its real fascination comes from the way it blends cinematic production values with supposed documentary vérité to create a glacially paced, aquarium-like reality where every snub and snide comment has crushing emotional impact. With its bitchy feuds, primping male bimbos and meta-reality aura, this TRL-scored comedy of manners has come to occupy the main stage of teen-pop drama — a Beverly Hills, 90210 for the Facebook set—with the on- and offscreen feud between Conrad and Montag stoking the ratings higher. Today, Montag is a pop villainess on a par with old-school prime-time bitch Brenda Walsh. (Of her feud with Conrad, Montag only says, “Lauren doesn’t like me and she thinks I did something to her, and that’s how it’s spun.”) There is widespread skepticism about onscreen events. Was Spencer’s marriage proposal to Heidi a publicity stunt? (Why did he tell the cameras but not his parents?) Are the two even a couple? (If so, they’re an oddly multitasking one — part Svengali/ingenue, part sociopath/bimbo, part mass-media performance art.) Is the show scripted? (Serendipitous confrontations, sitcom plot points and immaculately composed mise-en-scène certainly bear the handprints of a nudging producer.) Blogs and tabloids are alight with theories and deconstructions, but one thing’s for sure: Even if Heidi Montag is real, the girl who left Crested Butte, Colorado, for Hollywood three years ago is getting less so every minute. Having entered into the VIP section of pop culture, she is now molding herself for the next act in Hollywood semi-stardom, beginning work on her debut album in February. “It will be kind of like the Pussycat Dolls, Britney Spears and Fergie,” she has promised fans. Thus has Blender come calling. In person, with her blond hair and blue-green eyes, Montag suggests a narrower version of Clueless-era Alicia Silverstone. She wears no makeup or jewelry — not even the gigantic engagement ring we saw Pratt give her in one particularly misty Hills moment. Whatever her matrimonial status, Montag is crystal clear about her career plans. “I’ve always been singing,” she says. “I’ve been dancing since I was 2 — hip-hop, jazz, tap, everything. I was a wicked stepsister in Cinderella. I was a fairy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I was Beatrice in … an old English play. Acting, singing, dancing — it’s always been in me.” Blender proposes that viewers would be surprised that Montag sings at all. “Yeah, I know,” she says. “But they won’t be surprised when they hear me.” She’d also like to correct her misrepresentation as a shallow shopaholic. Books recently on her nightstand include The Tipping Point, Blink and Memoirs of a Geisha. “I like to read a couple books at once,” Montag says. “I was reading the Princess Diana book. I’m reading a book about Chicago and the mob. Right now I’m also reading the Bible, beginning to end. I’m very religious. That’s how I’ve gotten to where I am.” She shrugs. The Lord having put her on reality TV, Montag can now benefit from the estimable promotional skills of her onscreen fiancé and offscreen manager. Spencer Pratt’s character is where The Hills gets really deep. The unquenchable flame of reality TV’s ur-asshole, Puck, from The Real World: San Francisco, burns brightly in this hustling 24-year-old towhead, a guy who calls buddies “player” and valet parkers “bro,” swears on his “mother’s life” that he didn’t do what he did in the previous scene and greets every situation, from a romantic betrayal to a pregnancy scare, with the same sleepy half-smile. “I think he’s often just joking,” Montag says about The Hills version of Pratt. “But then you put some music to it and a couple of looks and suddenly he’s an ass.” Or, as a female cast member declares, “Spencer is the ultimate cheese.” But he is a sharp cheese, indeed. Pratt may be one of the most ruthless and skillful young manipulators of reality TV thus far. A writer and a producer, Pratt had already created the reality series The Princes of Malibu before appearing on The Hills, filming himself, his erstwhile pal Brody Jenner and Jenner’s stepfather, music producer David Foster, with a single camera, and then selling their onscreen lives to Fox. The show ran for a few episodes before it was canceled when Foster’s wife, Linda Thompson, filed for divorce (thus kiboshing the whole “family” concept). “Spencer is very ambitious, very smart and very crafty,” Montag says. “He is just on The Hills for fun.” Pratt has set his sights on turning Montag into “a multiplatinum pop star,” he says. To this end, this reality Pygmalion has managed to parlay his connection with the Grammy Award–winning Foster into the beginnings of Montag’s singing career. “David Foster heard I was working on music and he was like, ‘Come by the studio, I’d like to see if you can sing,’” Montag says. “So I sang for him a little bit and he was like, ‘OK, great. Let’s do this.’” And a star was conceived. Montag’s entry into music hasn’t been without its bumps. In August, her Yaz-sampling song “Body Language” was leaked to Ryan Seacrest’s radio show. Such is Montag’s confidence in her presence that she isn’t limiting her career goals to singing. Like her role model, Madonna, she also plans to undertake acting. And such is her sense of self that she doesn’t hope to simply be in movies. “I also plan to win an Oscar,” she says. “I’m very ambitious.”I am designing my own Fashion line called "HEIDIWOOD" for Anchor Blue. It will be for Spring, Summer, and Fall 08 in 176 stores Nation Wide.
