So This is How Speidi Got So Rich

Ah, Speidi is back, and they’re better than ever on Bethenny. I’m actually not kidding. On Wednesday, The Hills stars Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag appeared on Bethenny Frankel’s show and admitted lots of dirty little tidbits about their finances. Their stories were obnoxious, sure, but it’s clear that they now have the attitude of reality stars who played the game, acted stupidly with their money, lost most of their money, and now ruefully know better. And the married couple of five years (I know, whaaaaaat?) actually acted nicely and spoke frankly about their fame.

Pratt spoke about how much he earned simply from calling the paparazzi to capture staged shots of them wherever they went.

They were never following us, I was calling them, Pratt says. There’s big money in there. Every photo you take, they are selling them to the tabloids. So if you partner up with them, you get a cut… We were making like half a million dollars in photos a year.

He said — with a straight face — that the demand for tabloid photos aren’t what they used to be, since Instagram and Twitter photos can now beat paparazzi to the punch. So thanks to social media, they quickly became has-beens. Frankel also asked how real the drama was on the show.

On our show, we knew the stakes, Pratt says. We got bonuses if ratings went up. Nobody forced us to do things we didn’t want to do, like producers. But we thought, ‘What can I do to get ratings up to get a huge bonus?’

Montag also explained that it wasn’t like the Real Housewives where everyone was on a level playing field. It was Lauren Conrad’s show, since she was the narrator and it was from her point of view, and Speidi had to find a way to make themselves stand out. Montag even admitted to faking a pregnancy test for ratings (and darn it, because I specifically remember looking forward to that episode like a total sucker).

So how did they lose all of their money?

Montag had a ton of plastic surgery, as we remember all too well, and had to continuously pay lawyers and their agents.

Every single night, we took 10 people to dinner, and bought $3000 bottles of Screaming Eagle, says Pratt. We took friends on vacation, wrote $15,000 checks to friends who were struggling, gave my ‘million dollar wardrobe’ to a friend who wanted to be a real estate agent in Beverly Hills…

Well, they lived, and now, they have definitely learned. Pratt says that they go to their old fancy restaurants now and order water and split dishes — aka, live within their means.

“We were so young. You make alot of mistakes in your 20s. We’re living very humble, small scale lives now,” says Montag.

It may have taken them awhile — but isn’t being responsible fun?

You can watch Pratt and Montag’s interview below:

Image: Giphy