What Happened to Spencer Pratt? Where He Is Now in 2026

For a while, Spencer Pratt was the guy America loved to hate — the smirking instigator of “The Hills” who blew a fortune on healing crystals and seemed destined to be a punchline. Then his house burned down on live video, and something strange happened: the internet decided to root for him. The villain became a folk hero, his wife’s old album shot up the charts, and he ended up running for mayor of Los Angeles. Here’s where Spencer Pratt is in 2026.

01Profile

Full name

Spencer Pratt

Born

August 14, 1983 (42 years old)

Birthplace

Los Angeles, California, USA

Occupation

Reality TV personality, content creator, podcaster

Best known for

MTV's "The Hills" (2007–2010); "Speidi" with wife Heidi Montag

Spouse

Heidi Montag (married 2009)

Children

Two sons, Gunner (b. 2017) and Ryker (b. 2022)

2026 status

TikTok star, podcast host, and former LA mayoral candidate

If you only knew Pratt from a decade ago, that last line probably stops you cold. The reality-TV antagonist who once seemed like the human embodiment of mid-2000s excess spent 2026 in actual electoral politics. How he got there is the whole story.

02The Rise: Reality TV’s Greatest Villain

From “The Hills” to “Speidi”

Pratt first appeared on MTV’s “Laguna Beach” spin-off universe before becoming a fixture on “The Hills,” the network’s glossy, semi-scripted Los Angeles soap that ran from 2006 to 2010. He was cast as the boyfriend — and eventual husband — of Heidi Montag, and he leaned all the way into the role of provocateur, feuding with Montag’s former best friend Lauren Conrad and stirring up nearly every storyline he touched.

It worked almost too well. Pratt became the show’s defining villain, the guy producers could count on to detonate any quiet moment. Years later, a Yahoo fan poll would crown him the greatest reality TV villain of all time — a title he now wears with obvious pride.

The crystals, the money, and the meltdown

Together, Pratt and Montag became “Speidi,” a tabloid superpower whose every move — a hasty wedding, Montag’s heavily publicized cosmetic surgeries, a doomed pop-music push — became fodder for headlines. By their own later admission, they earned roughly $10 million during their reality-TV heyday and spent nearly all of it. Among the more infamous purchases: about $1 million on healing crystals, a detail the couple has cheerfully repeated in interviews for years.

When “The Hills” ended in 2010, the money and the fame evaporated fast, and the pair found themselves broke and largely unemployable in scripted Hollywood.

Doubling down on villainy abroad

Rather than fade away, the couple turned their notoriety into a touring act. They competed on the UK’s “Celebrity Big Brother” in 2013 and again in 2017, where their refusal to play nicely made them, improbably, even more hated — and even more watchable. It was an early sign of the instinct that would later save them: an understanding that being talked about, even unkindly, was its own kind of currency.

03The Turning Point

For most of the 2010s, the Pratts existed in reality-TV limbo — famous enough to be recognized, not famous enough to cash in. They rebuilt slowly, quietly, raising two sons and chronicling their lives on podcasts and social media. Then the algorithm found them.

• 2009Pratt and Heidi Montag marry; the couple becomes the tabloid duo "Speidi."
• 2010"The Hills" ends. The pair later say they burned through roughly $10 million — including about $1 million on crystals.
• 2013 & 2017They appear on the UK's "Celebrity Big Brother," cementing their villain reputation overseas.
• Early 2020sPratt reinvents himself as a TikTok personality, selling crystals and posting candid, self-deprecating family content.
• Jan 7, 2025The Palisades Fire destroys the family's Pacific Palisades home; Pratt films the devastation in real time.
• Jan 2026On the fire's first anniversary, Pratt announces a run for mayor of Los Angeles.

The quiet years matter, because they’re what made the loud ones possible. By the time disaster struck, Pratt had already spent years building a TikTok following that knew him not as a cartoon villain but as a goofy, oversharing dad who happened to sell crystals. That audience was about to become a lifeline.

04The Wildfire and the Comeback

On January 7, 2025, the Palisades Fire tore through Pacific Palisades, driven by ferocious Santa Ana winds. It became one of the most destructive wildfires in California history, destroying thousands of structures and killing more than a dozen people. Among the homes lost was the one Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag shared with their two young sons. Pratt’s parents lost their home too.

Pratt documented it all, livestreaming the approaching flames and then the smoldering aftermath to his followers. The footage was raw and genuinely hard to watch — a man filming his life burning down because he didn’t know what else to do. Whatever you thought of him before, the loss was real, and it landed.

What happened next surprised almost everyone. Pratt asked fans to stream Montag’s 2010 album “Superficial” to help the family generate income while they figured out where to live. The internet responded en masse. Within days the album hit No. 1 on the iTunes all-genre chart — fifteen years after its release — and, according to Billboard, debuted across several of the magazine’s charts, including a No. 54 entry on the Billboard 200 and a No. 2 placement on Top Dance Albums. His TikTok following swelled past two million as a wave of public sympathy reframed the couple’s whole narrative.

“Please stream any of @heidimontag music on any platforms it will make a huge difference.” — Spencer Pratt, in a TikTok post after the fire, as reported by Variety

The grief didn’t vanish, and Pratt was open about that. Months later he told People he still felt “so much anger” over a disaster he came to see as preventable. But he and Montag also channeled the attention into work: in mid-2025 they relaunched as podcasters, partnering with Studio71 on “The Fame Game with Heidi & Spencer,” a show about parenthood, pop culture, and rebuilding their lives.

05What He Is Doing Now

A run for mayor of Los Angeles

The most unexpected turn came on January 7, 2026 — exactly one year after the fire — when Pratt announced a campaign for mayor of Los Angeles at a Palisades protest, casting himself as the “worst nightmare” of incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. He centered his platform on fire preparedness, homelessness, crime, and the cost of doing business in the city, framing the disaster that took his home as the result of official negligence.

It would have been easy to dismiss the run as a stunt, except the polling refused to cooperate. A UC Berkeley–Los Angeles Times survey showed him in serious contention, and in the June 2026 primary he pulled a sizable share of the vote.

“The realization that all of this was preventable” was the most heartbreaking part, Pratt said of the fire. — Spencer Pratt, on launching his mayoral campaign, as reported by Fox News

In the end, Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman advanced to the November runoff, meaning Pratt did not finish in the top two. But for a reality-TV villain with no political experience, polling competitively in America’s second-largest city was a stunning result — and a sign of how completely public opinion had shifted.

Content creator and podcaster

Outside the campaign, Pratt’s day job is still the internet. He remains a prolific TikTok creator, mixing family content, fire-recovery advocacy, crystal sales, and the kind of knowing, self-aware humor that turned his villain reputation into an asset. “The Fame Game” podcast continues, and he and Montag have leaned into a story of reinvention — from rebuilding after the fire to Montag’s renewed music career.

Husband, dad, and rebuilder

Through all of it, the throughline is family. Pratt and Montag, married since 2009, are raising sons Gunner and Ryker while navigating the long, grinding process of recovering from a total loss. He’s spoken candidly about the financial and emotional toll, and about leaning on the same online community that rallied around them after the fire.

06Summary

Spencer Pratt’s arc is one of the strangest redemption stories reality TV has produced — not because he changed who he is, but because the world changed how it saw him. The crystals, the oversharing, the relentless hustle that once read as obnoxious now read as endearing, even admirable, in the face of genuine catastrophe.

The guy America loved to hate spent a decade as a cautionary tale and then, in the worst year of his life, became something close to a folk hero. Whether the mayoral run was the beginning of a political career or just the wildest chapter yet, one thing is clear: writing off Spencer Pratt has never been a smart bet.