The Hills: New Beginnings is taking things back to 2006, the year the original series began, by bringing back most of the original cast members. And it’s also bringing the aughts back in a big way by featuring a storyline involving a celeb blogger notorious for drawing penises on celeb photos.
The premiere brought up some drama involving new cast member Mischa Barton and Perez Hilton, and the episode ended with a tease that they’re going to confront each other in episode number two. This is truly a blast from the past, but it’s far from a positive one. Because in case you forgot (or got out of the 2000s without ever clicking through Hilton's endless neon pink scroll of harsh celebrity commentary), what Perez Hilton did to Mischa Barton is actually something that warrants an apology.
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As for how this has anything to do with The Hills, Hilton came up when Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt were interviewing Barton as a guest on their podcast. (In the episode, this was featured during a flashback while Barton and Stephanie Pratt were talking on the beach, but MTV has released a longer version as a deleted scene.) Part of the podcast conversation was about Barton becoming famous so quickly when she was on The O.C. They talked about how Hilton, who wrote about all the It Girls of the era, was so hard on her.
“Perez was a total bully back in the day, and he was awful to me and lots of women,” Barton explains on the show. Pratt says that Hilton must have apologized by now, and Barton responds, “I don’t think he ever really did.” Montag and Pratt say that they’ll get an apology out of him, because they’re actually good friends with Hilton and he’s one of their son’s godfathers.
The episode ends with everyone getting ready for Stephanie Pratt's welcome home party, at which point Barton gets a text from Montag that reads, “Just a heads-up, Spencer and I invited Perez. It’s going to be a good chance to clear the air.” Barton is clearly upset by Speidi playing producer, but Audrina Patridge tells her that she’ll probably run into Hilton eventually now that she’s back in LA, so she might as well talk to him now. It’s a very reality TV show sort of reasoning.
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Now, as Barton said, Hilton hasn’t been nice to her. As the clip from The Hills shows, he used to call her “Mush," and there are plenty of old posts on his site about “Mushy Fartone” that are incredibly mean, and often about her body, specifically. There’s even one that’s simply titled “Mushy Sucks” and includes the line, “Cellulite at 23 is never pretty! Mushy’s pix, boobies and cellulite thighs in full glory, were published in an Oz mag for all to see. Barfalicious!” With comments like that, it’s very understandable that Barton would never want to see or talk to this man, even if he has changed his ways since then. These days PerezHilton.com still reports on Barton, but it’s more general news updates, for instance, when she won her revenge porn case.
Still, because this is a reality show and drama reigns supreme, Hilton is seemingly going to be in the next episode. In a video posted to YouTube, Hilton explains, “Your boy is going to be on one episode of The Hills. The best this season. I believe it’s Episode 2 unless they change it.” In the same video, he also told a story about running in to Barton at another Hills party — this one in celebration of the series returning — and says, “I ran into Mischa Barton ... and as soon as she saw me she went running away.”
So it sounds like, if Hilton and Barton do talk at Stephanie Pratt's big party, she’s putting up with it for the show and only the show. And if that's the case, literally no one can blame her.