Spencer Pratt has never exactly been shy about how he hustled his way into fame, but this latest confession is one of those jaw-droppers that makes you stop mid-scroll and mutter, wow, the early 2000s were TRULY unhinged.
The Hills villain-in-chief is now admitting that long before he was plotting reality TV chaos, he was already dabbling in sketchy tabloid capitalism, and the headline-making subject just so happened to be a teenage Mary-Kate Olsen.
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In his memoir, The Guy You Loved to Hate: Confessions from a Reality TV Villain, Spencer spills that waaaaay back in 2004 he stumbled upon what he describes as a full-on party-pic photo shrine to Mary-Kate in the bedroom of his pal Max Winkler — who, yes, is Henry Winkler’s son, and was (back then) Mary-Kate’s recently-broken-up-with-ex-boyfriend.
But where most people might have seen heartbreak décor, Spencer saw dollar signs. Allegedly very large dollar signs.
While chatting with Page Six Radio this week, Spencer casually dropped the dime on his crazy story of trying to sell those snaps — involving the kind of number that makes tabloids salivate and publicists sweat:
“I think it [the bidding on the photos] got up to like $90,000.”
Yes, ninety thousand dollars. For party pics. Of the then-teenage Full House star.
Spencer claims the first photo he sold, to InTouch, brought in $50,000, which in 2004 money was basically like winning the Powerball. LOLz!
And before anyone starts clutching pearls too hard, Spencer was quick to defend himself by pointing out who exactly we’re talking about here:
“These lovely individuals are already hundred-millionaires.”
Well, not wrong about that! See, in his mind, this wasn’t exploitation, it was entrepreneurship. Or at least that’s how he frames it now.
He also insisted that nothing he sold crossed any real lines:
“Nothing I sold … you wouldn’t post on your [Instagram account].”
Fair point… only if true, of course!
Still, he admits there’s one image floating around that continues to haunt him, mostly because it wasn’t one he sold. According to Spencer, that particular photo made him catch heat because it showed Mary-Kate looking less than pristine:
“There’s a photo of me like at a semi formal, and there, Mary-Kate, she looks inebriated. I didn’t sell that photo. I’m in it. That’s somebody else [who sold it], so that’s the one I get a little heat for. But my photos were clean.”
Sure, Jan!
When asked whether Mary-Kate ever confronted him about the whole thing, Spencer joked that he still gets “Christmas cards” from the Row designer, which feels very on-brand for his style of deflection humor.
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In his memoir itself, Spencer writes that he didn’t exactly go hunting for these photos. He says he simply recognized an opportunity to monetize his proximity to fame during what many folks have called the golden age of tabloid voyeurism.
That infamous photo shrine of Max’s, Pratt writes, was basically a gold mine hiding in plain sight:
“Young love documented in European hotels, Hollywood parties, stolen moments. This, I realized, was a wasted resource.”
Apparently, he even pitched his plan to Max under the guise of emotional healing:
“I asked Max if I could take the photos off his wall — you know, for his healing process. He didn’t say no, so I took that to be a yes.”
From there, Spencer contacted an editor at Us Weekly, offering images that, in his words, simply showed Mary-Kate acting like a normal teen:
“Show[ed] her being a normal teenager. Partying.”
He was then connected with a photo agency, and the whole thing quickly took on a vibe that even Spencer now admits felt shady:
“…like we were arranging a drug deal instead of trading teenage romance pics.”
The moment it all went public, though, is where the story turns almost cinematic. Spencer describes seeing the InTouch cover at a gas station and realizing he wasn’t just behind the scenes anymore. He was in the frame, too! He wrote:
“Here I was, 20 years old, turning my buddy’s romantic misery into startup capital. Less than a week later there it was, evidence of my entrepreneurial genius staring back at me from the InTouch cover at a gas station: ‘TEENS GONE WILD!’ across the cover. A shot of Mary-Kate with a constellation of empties — ‘LOOK AT ALL THE EMPTIES!’ — and there I was in the background, frozen mid-shaka. I hadn’t sold that frame. Someone else was shopping, and now I wasn’t just the seller, I was part of the merchandise. My face was now forever linked to Mary-Kate Olsen’s supposed wild phase, preserved in grocery store checkout lines across America.”
Whoa!!!
And yet, he carried on.
Oh, and when the check finally arrived? He wrote this about how he felt:
“I’m rich.”
Cut to now, and Spencer Pratt is not only reliving this mess in memoir form, he’s also casually running for mayor of Los Angeles. Because of course he is.
If nothing else, Spencer remains a perfect reminder that fame in the 2000s was a wild time, and some people are still cashing in on the stories all these years later. Okay then!
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[Image via MEGA/WENN]
