Audrina Patridge Gets Real About The Hills Producers Creating Fake Drama with Kristin Cavallari (2024)

Audrina Patridge has a warning for fans of "reality" shows: Don't believe everything you see on TV!

The Hills alum took time in her new memoir, Choices: To the Hills and Back Again, to break down which dramatic moments were actually manufactured by the show producers.

For example: Patridge claims former boyfriend Justin "Justin Bobby" Brescia "worked with the show to manufacture a relationship with Kristin [Cavallari] to keep him in the public eye" — even though Patridge, 37, and Brescia, 40, weren't together at the time.

"It's funny to think about how that could only happen before social media. Today, you would see pictures of me on Instagram with a new boyfriend while still acting like Justin and I were together on the show. It could never happen!" she writes. "I had moved on from Justin and was already dating someone else, but the producers wanted to keep that off-camera and have my continued focus on Justin as a romantic interest."

Also according to Patridge, when she was readying to leave a party at the home of former costars Heidi Montag Pratt and Spencer Pratt, "producers wouldn't let me go until I had that confrontation with Kristin over Justin."

She recalls, "There really wasn't much for me to say to her. I was finished with Justin and I really didn't care if Kristin and Justin were hanging out — especially because I knew it was just for the show."

She continues, "Still, production was adamant that we get an explosive scene. So adamant, in fact, that they blocked in my car with production vans and wouldn't let me drive away until I fought with her. I was furious! This was way beyond anything they'd done in the past to get the scene they wanted. I literally couldn't leave."

At the time, Patridge allegedly called her agent and lawyer to determine how she should proceed. While her lawyer was on the phone with the show's producers, Cavallari, 35, talked her through it all.

"Kristin didn't want to wait around anymore, so she was there trying to calm me down enough to just film the scene and get it over with. We laughed about it off-camera, but on-camera, we yelled and glared and made it work," she writes. "I just wanted to move on, and I felt like Justin was still creating drama for me just so he could remain relevant. It's not like he didn't have a thriving career outside of the show. He still did hair, and his clients included some very well-known names, including Adam Levine. The producers were egging him on and wanted to get that drama however possible. What we wanted really didn't matter."

Patridge says Cavallari's relationship with Brescia "started out fake, but they began partying together behind the scenes a lot." She even believes Brescia "might have started catching feelings for her, despite his more cynical intentions." But Patridge claims she "didn't care" and "didn't want to know."

Patridge — who also starred alongside Lauren Conrad, Whitney Port and Lauren "Lo" Bosworth — write that she "almost preferred the fake drama to the editing of more authentic scenes." And because there was a "gray area between what was real and what was produced," she was initially "inspired" to create "a separate on-air persona" while filming The Hills.

"Over the course of the first season or two, we began to see that the producers would cut the footage a certain way to manufacture more drama, or they would eliminate a redemptive moment for someone who'd finally spoken her mind," she explains. "It's no surprise to say that, at a certain point, we stopped trusting most of the producers. I get it; their job is to create dynamic, highly watchable television. I knew we had to meet in the middle to get the job done, but I also had to learn how to protect myself when my feelings got in the way."

Adds Patridge, "They might use voice-overs to put a different spin on a scene in editing, or have another person weigh in on it, which created a whole different level of drama. Or they might simply show someone giving a nasty look from a totally different moment that had nothing to do with the conversation that was actually playing out."

RELATED GALLERY: The Stars of The Hills: Where Are They Now?

Ahead of her book's release, Patridge opened up to PEOPLE about how she's "grown so much as a person" since starring in the 2000s hit.

"I was so naive and so trusting and just such a people pleaser," she recalled of her former self. "And I was trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted, but whenever you're thrown into a world where you're just pulled in every direction, you just go ... you have to live through things and feel the emotions and learn from it."

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Choices: To the Hills and Back Again is now available wherever books are sold.