A reality TV star running for mayor of America’s second-largest city has signed a contract to turn his campaign—and potentially his time in office—into a television show, according to TMZ.
Spencer Pratt, best known as the villain of millennial reality staple The Hills, inked a deal with Los Angeles production company Boardwalk Pictures to document his run against Democratic Mayor Karen Bass, sources with direct knowledge told TMZ.
Cameras are reportedly about to begin rolling with Pratt, his wife, and fellow Hills star Heidi Montag, and their children. Crucially, the contract specifically provides that filming would continue if Pratt wins and is sworn into office. Sources told TMZ the production team and Pratt have not yet discussed the logistics of filming inside the mayor’s office, but the deal is signed.
The 42-year-old built his campaign around the devastating Los Angeles fires of 2025, attacking Bass over her handling of the disaster. In his campaign announcement video, Pratt spread his arms in front of a silver Airstream trailer and declared, “This is where I live. This is where I live. That’s where Karen Bass, Mayor Bass, burnt down my house,” he said.
TMZ subsequently reported that Pratt had, in fact, been staying at the Hotel Bel-Air, where rooms can run up to $2,000 a night, for more than a month. Montag and their two children are not in the Airstream either, residing instead in Santa Barbara.
When confronted, Pratt denied saying what he said. “I have never told anyone I lived there,” he told TMZ, before adding: “The Airstream is a temporary facility. A hotel is a temporary facility. Where my kids are in Santa Barbara right now is temporary housing, this is semantics.”
The trailer troubles arrive at an otherwise promising moment for Pratt’s campaign. He delivered a surprisingly strong performance against Bass in a recent debate, with Mike Bonin, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs, telling TheWrap: “I’m sure the debate organizers were worried, going in, about how the reality TV star bad boy would behave. Would he keep interrupting? But he came across as serious and passionate and funny at times.”
Pratt’s latest professional credit before entering politics was a stint as Mr. Snow Cone on The Masked Singer. But sources told veteran gossip journalist Rob Shuter that he “studies Trump,” including rally speeches and old episodes of The Apprentice. “If one reality star became president,” one source told Shuter, “Spencer honestly thinks another one can become mayor.”
Pratt himself has drawn the comparison explicitly, insisting his past villainy was always calculated. “People know when I was a reality villain, I was doing it to get paid. It was strategic,” he told CBS News. “I’m being very strategic to win and save L.A., but there’s no strategy when you’re standing in an Airstream on your burned-out town. You can’t fake that.”
The election is on June 2. Los Angeles has not elected a Republican mayor since 2001.
