🎧 From ‘Us Weekly’ to City Hall? Spencer Pratt Makes His Case to Janice Min — Again

The reality villain-turned-mayoral candidate reunites with the editor who helped make him famous — and takes aim at Bass, Newsom and Hollywood flight

GUNS BLAZING “I’ve always just voted based off of the Second Amendment. If Joe Biden had been like, ‘Spencer needs his CCW (concealed carry weapon permit),’ I could easily have voted for Joe,” L.A. mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt tells Janice Min. (Screenshot)

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Nearly 20 years ago, Spencer Pratt became reality TV infamous on the covers of Us Weekly. Now, he sits down with Janice Min — the editor who once put him on those covers and now Ankler CEO — to talk about that era, and his run for mayor of Los Angeles.

It’s a roller coaster conversation, part full-circle media moment, part political grenade.

Pratt calls Gavin Newsom a “demon” and a “reality star in charge of everything failing.” He mocks Zohran Mamdani’s “free everything” messaging as “B.S.” and says if he’s elected, “the Metro will be free — from you getting stabbed.” He argues L.A. isn’t ready for the Olympics — “not even ready for a USC game” — and claims he already has a Day One “blacklist” of city officials he’d fire.

On Hollywood, Pratt frames the industry as existential to L.A.’s identity — arguing production needs to return and civic leadership needs to make the city competitive again. He praises his former high school classmate Jonah Hill for demanding that his productions shoot in L.A., and Pratt says he himself refused to shoot in Bulgaria. He says as mayor he will call out Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. and the studios “all day long” for not keeping production in town. He also has very sharp words for Hollywood unions as they enter a negotiation period.

FEUD FOR THE AGES The Hills cast members, from left: Pratt, Heidi Montag, Audrina Patridge and Lauren Conrad. Inset: Pratt and Montag on the cover of Us Weekly in 2008. (MTV; Us Weekly)

It’s classic Pratt for those who first met him on MTV’s The Hills: provocative and theatrical. But it’s also something else — a reminder that the machinery of fame and politics are now fully intertwined (just don’t liken him to Donald Trump). The former reality TV villain who once plotted his way onto magazine covers is now plotting a path to City Hall.

You can listen to the whole conversation on the Ankler Agenda podcast, and you can watch the video on YouTube.