Heidi & Spencer Pratt Are Still in Love, Still Hate LC, and Actually Frame Their Tabloid Covers

The first thing you see upon entering the house is a customized LEGO-rendered portrait of the cover of the book Spencer and Heidi wrote together, How to Be Famous. To the left of the portrait, which hangs above the staircase, is most of Spencer’s infamous crystal collection. The rest of it—the much bigger pieces—is down the hall, filling up a game room along with a pool table they don’t use and a handful of vintage arcade games, a few of which Hills superfans would be able to recognize. Spencer has that same tired sarcasm and resignation as he shows me his bigger crystal pieces. “This is supposed to be bringing in money, but I can tell you it doesn’t work. Citrine is supposed to bring wealth. I’m just waiting.”

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Lining the walls of the office are nearly all of the magazine (and tabloid) covers Heidi and Spencer have ever been on. There are Heidi’s Maxim and Rolling Stone covers, but there are also covers from Us Weekly andLife & Style. DESTROYED BY FAME and HEIDI’S NEW SURGERY DISASTER, the cover lines read.

The article shows the couple, who now live in a house owned by Spencer’s father near Santa Barbara, vacillating between two competing truths—pride in their fame and their surprisingly happy relationship, and a weary, reluctant acceptance of their terrible and very public career decisions.

You watch them on Celebrity Big Brother or Marriage Boot Camp and see two people going through the motions, stirring up drama not because they want to necessarily, but because they need to. “Mercenaries is pretty much what we are,” Spencer tells me with a certain resignation. “Call us in when you are ready for some action. That keeps the bills paid.”

Neither seem to have specific regrets from their time on The Hills, especially when it comes to their spat with Lauren Conrad. “Today, I would be like, ‘Bitch, you know what you did,” Heidi says of her fight with her former BFF about the latter’s alleged sex tape, which the couple maintains exists. “Lauren is a cold-hearted killer. That’s what people don’t get. She will cut you in your sleep. She tried to destroy us. If you want to throw missiles, I’m throwing a nuke. This is how I operate,” Spencer is quoted as saying. Later, he adds:

“People can bring me down all they want, but try to get on a cover. Try to get in a magazine. Good luck.”

But the decisions they’ve made since—the plastic surgery (the writer notes that Heidi’s face is “not grotesque”), the investment in Heidi’s music career, the $75,000 crystals—are clearly not ideal.

“Reacclimating off that high of that fame and lifestyle was really hard,” Heidi says. “We had these expectations of, ‘Oh, we’re going to have our own show.’ My expectation of life and where I thought we were going to be is so different from our reality.”

Spencer, however, believes that “in a different dimension” they are “killing it still,” maintaining that Kris Jenner once asked him to be Kim Kardashian’s manager (which Kim’s rep denies). Oh, and he has a name picked out for their future daughter.

Spider. “Who is going to pick on Spider in school, especially if it’s a girl,” Spencer exclaims. “We’ll see,” Heidi replies.

Read the whole thing here.

Image via Getty.