Things were so bad between the women that MTV was forced to Photoshop cast promo shots. And when they did finally have to be photographed together for a 2008 Rolling Stone cover, along with Audrina and Whitney, they did not speak once during the nine hour shoot as MTV reps and DiVello nervously looked on, per the mag. “We were on good behavior,” Lauren would describe the atmosphere later. “I mean, there’s definitely bad energy between us, but I’m not angry…we’re civil with each other.”
Already fractured, Spencer starting the infamous sex tape rumor would be the final nail in the friendship coffin, causing the implosion of Lauren and Heidi’s friendship and leading to the iconic “You know what you did!” line yelled into infamy in season three when Spencer and Heidi crashed a scene. “MTV should care what Spencer did to me. It’s not okay that they let him up here,” Lauren, who felt set up, would later tell a producer in behind the scenes footage aired by MTV during a special in 2016. “It’s not f—king funny when you guys do that. I’m gonna go home now. I don’t want to film in the same vicinity as them.”
At the time, Heidi felt like the wronged party, being iced out by the rest of the cast. (Spencer would later take blame for the rumor.)
“We were such. Good. Friends,” Heidi told Rolling Stone. “A part of me just wants to go up and be like, ‘Hey, how are you?’ But the other part of me is so mad…It’s like I’m the odd man out.”
Her other half (and the cause of their epic rift), however, clearly knew their feud was ratings gold, adding, “If Lauren and Heidi were friends, people wouldn’t tune in.”
While they sort of reached a truce on-camera when Heidi crashed Lauren’s birthday on a boat, they never became friends again, with Lauren’s final scene on The Hills being attending Heidi and Spencer’s wedding after much deliberation.
“You just want to follow along. The hard part is there was a time when they would literally not speak to each other, which it’s really difficult to make a TV show about people who just won’t talk to one another,” DiVello looked back on filming amidst the feud. “It’s a lot of begging…sometimes if Heidi came to Lauren’s birthday party and she’s going to get on the boat, we don’t have any control over that, let her get on the boat and if Lauren wants to accept her then she’ll accept her. We certainly didn’t pick sides in it, but we just told the story and went along with it.”