Mischa Barton, the surprise addition to the cast of The Hills: New Beginnings, is in for somewhat of a surprise herself: She's never seen the original show. In an interview with Cosmopolitan alongside her new co-stars Whitney Port, Heidi Pratt, and Audrina Patridge, the O.C. actress said she "never got to watch" the famed early-2000s reality hit, but something about joining it this time around felt right.
“I was approached by a million different people for a long period of time,” she says of her journey to being a reality star. However, it was her past connection with the show the sealed the deal.
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“It’s weird because I remember going out with Nicole Richie and people at the time, and we would come by set when they were filming The Hills,” Barton told the outlet. “She would drag me to the producer van to see what you guys had been up to all day. All these years later...it sounds corny, but it felt like this was supposed to happen.”
While Barton is coming in as a brand-new face, also expect a ton of familiar Hills characters to appear on your screen. In addition to Port, Pratt, and Patridge (side note: should they start a folk band?), the reunion will also include Spencer Pratt, Stephanie Pratt, Jason Wahler, Frankie Delgado, and Justin Bobby. However, Kristin Cavallari (who is busy on her own show, Very Cavallari), Lauren Conrad, and Lo Bosworth won't be rounding out the original crew.
“They’re not part of the story line,” Port told Cosmo, and that was that.
However, having Barton come in totally blind is sure to make her storyline that much fresher, and hopefully provide the shake-up this reunion needs to not just invoke nostalgia, but also attract an obsessed audience all over again.
The Hills: New Beginnings comes to screens this summer.