When I mentioned to Cavallari that I had attended the New York stop of her live podcast tour last year, her insistence that it was her worst appearance of that run was more clinical than self-deprecating. She also thought, to my considerable surprise, that Laguna Beach was boring, crediting its success to its timing, editing, music, and scenery. “Of course, now we’re living in this TikTok, social media world and everything is so fast-paced,” she said. “But really, when you break it down, a whole lot didn’t happen.”
Like Conrad, though, Cavallari is cognizant of the show’s role in her current career as the proprietor of a business tied to her name and image. Uncommon James, her jewelry and skin-care company, relaunched her signature black choker from her Laguna Beach days in commemoration of the reunion. Plus, she didn’t mind having a chance to set the record straight about Cabo. “I thought I handled it exceptionally well for being an intoxicated 17-year-old with her ex-boyfriend yelling in her face,” Cavallari said. “And so I stand by everything I did in that scene, including dancing on the bar, by the way, because everyone in Cabo dances on bars.”
Lauren Conrad and high school best friend Lo Bosworth, also on hand for the reunion.
Courtesy of the cast.
Colletti was the last of the triangle whom I spoke to, and by contrast, he seemed ruminative about their legacy to a somewhat jarring degree—of the trio, he has kept the lowest profile since the show ended. “It was not something I was prepared for as far as the reaction to the show,” he said. “And when you’ve got a massive reaction to the show, but also a version of your life that is sensationalized, it’s just really tough when you’re that age, and I couldn’t sit comfortably with it.”
A few years ago, before the reunion plans were hatched, Colletti finally mustered the fortitude to revisit the show in preparation for a podcast he recorded with Cavallari. “I don’t want this to sound like all of it was like, ‘Oh, MTV totally made up the story of our lives,’” he said, but he had kept the show “locked away” in fear of “seeing your life twisted in a certain way or you portrayed a certain way, and also some of your worst, most embarrassing moments.”
After Laguna Beach, Colletti acquired a bit of a chip on his shoulder, believing that “we did not work to accomplish anything in the show, we just existed.” With his future appearances on TRL and One Tree Hill, he said, “I was just kind of determined to work hard and maybe prove something, that we had something to offer.”
On that point, he and Cavallari were in agreement. They also shared the notion that, despite their decades in the public eye, there was nothing special about the Laguna Beach cast—with the same fortuitous circumstances and timing, it could have been anyone, at any high school. It was a little hard to believe, having grown up with the show, that there wasn’t something distinctive in the Laguna water.
