After years apart, Lauren Conrad and Whitney Port have finally come face to face. Well, kind of.
While they met on MTV's hit series as interns at Teen Vogue nearly 15 years ago, Conrad has not remained close with her former castmates since she left the show in 2009 and did not appear in the series' revival in 2019. And, while they couldn't come physically together because of the coronavirus pandemic, they did finally catch up virtually for Port's podcast, Dear Media's With Whit. Spoiler alert: they were quite honest with each other.
As Port told Conrad, "I would say the question that I get asked the most of all time is are you still friends with Lauren?"
"That's what people really want to know," she continued. "That's how people really got to know us was together in the Teen Vogue closet and people always want to know the behind the scenes and, like, if there was any drama."
Her answer proved, no matter their distance, Port will always have Conrad's back. "My answer to them is always, you know, it's friends that you went to college with," she told her co-star. "Good friends that you had really special experiences with, that you always have love for, but that you don't always keep in touch with."
Conrad agreed. "I think, like, what you said is perfectly describing it," she responded. "I have so much love in my heart for you and, like, we shared this really weird, unique thing and I think it is, it's like old college friends, you know. I'll always remember you like that and I'll never have that with anybody else."
Port added, "It's just these roots that are always very strong. And, even when I'm talking to you now, I'm like, Oh, it feels totally normal. Like, I'm just sitting with you in that closet again. So, that feels really nice."
Still, Port was honest with Conrad about something she had thought to be true. "I had a friend that I had a falling out with that you then became best friends with," Port recalled. "I always thought for...all this time, I've been telling myself this story that because of that falling out with this friend, that that tinted how you felt about me."
However, the Lauren Conrad Beauty mogul clarified that that wasn't the case.
"I wish we'd had this conversation because when you said this, I was like, I actually have no idea what you're talking about," she told Port. "I have so much love for you and it's one of those things where like, I stopped filming and then I just kinda needed a clean break for a minute to kind of emotionally recover and I took some time off and then obviously moved out of LA...I have so many friends that, like, I love catching up with and I get to see them every once in a while."
Port further brought up the distance Conrad created between herself and the rest of the cast. "I think I also felt like once the show was over, you—not that you wanted nothing to do with it, 'cause I know that it wasn't that—but you tried to remove yourself obviously a little bit because it was so personal for so many years and you were just, you know, you couldn't have that magnifying glass on your life anymore," she told Conrad. "I think that I fell into that bucket of, 'Maybe she just doesn't really want anything to do with me anymore because I'm part of the show that she wants to kind of move away from.'"
From Conrad's point of view, though, it was an effort to live her own life outside of that environment.
"It was such an odd time for me and I did it for as long as I could and it was one of those things where I was like, okay, well, this isn't like a healthy space for me anymore. I need to kind of like live my own life and do this...I kind of like removed myself from that whole scene," she said. "And I apologize for ever making you feel that way, because obviously it had nothing to do with you personally...It's just me being like, okay, like I need to live my life. I lived a certain way for so long and, like, as much as I am appreciative and I love you and I love so many people we worked with...there is certain, like, toxic elements there and it gets really hard."
Ultimately, it was Conrad's chance to figure herself out after an unconventional early adulthood. "I was like, Okay, I got to just like step away from this world and like kind of heal in a way and like figure out who I want to be," she recalled. "We started so young...It's such a time where you're figuring out who you are and...I did it in such a weird way. Like, I need to do this on my own now…or just like literally living my life for me."