The Hills’ stars Lauren Conrad and Audrina Patridge’s weird first meeting

Lauren Conrad and Audrina Patridge may have become best friends on The Hills, but their first meeting was awkward to say the least.

Lauren Conrad and Audrina Patridge may have grown a tight bond during their reign on The Hills but it turns out their meeting wasn’t so organic.

The iconic MTV reality show first aired in 2006 and was Conrad’s spin-off series from Laguna Beach, as the Orange County socialite started a new life in Hollywood.

It was there she would meet her future roommate and confidant, Patridge.

Fans of the show would remember the pair meeting in the pool area at Conrad’s apartment complex, where she was living with her ex-best friend Heidi Montag at the time.

Patridge confidently swam up to Conrad and Montag and introduced herself, but producers had actually already scouted Patridge from the building and plotted the introduction.

Whitney, Heidi, Audrina and Lauren were the stars of The Hills. Picture: Vince Bucci/Getty Images For MTV

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“Adam DiVello (producer) told me I wasn‘t allowed to go to the pool for two weeks because they wanted us to meet on camera,” Audrina said in an interview Us Weekly.

“I had to keep dodging the pool and lobby.”

Montag also commented on the bizarre meeting, telling the magazine: “Audrina just swam up to us, and I was like, ‘What is this girl doing in our shot?’ No one told us we were meeting a new cast member.”

But it seems the rest of the friendships were natural connections from the get go.

The Hills was one of the most popular reality shows of the 2000s. Picture: John Shearer/Getty Images for MTV.com

Conrad, who is now 34, met her work best friend Whitney Port at Teen Vogue, where they both interned together.

Conrad later revealed to Us Weekly that their meeting was genuine.

“The shot of us waiting to go in for our interviews was actually when we met. I thought, ‘Oh, if I had to pick one of us, I would pick her’,” Conrad said.

While the storyline soon shifted to their sensational falling out, Conrad and Montag’s friendship was 100 per cent real from the beginning too, after they met when they were teenagers at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University.

“She just walked up to me in class, said hello and offered to share a cab home,” Conrad added. ”We immediately became friends.”

Patridge, Montag and Port reunited last year for the first season of the show’s spin-off, The Hills: New Beginnings, which streams on Binge, but Conrad was a notable omission.

Conrad reportedly didn’t wish to return to reality TV, and is a happy mother-of-two with her husband of six years, guitarist William Tell.

She has also released several clothing lines, is a New York Times best-selling author and runs a successful lifestyle business, LaurenConrad.com.

Montag, who goes by her married name Heidi Pratt after marrying the show’s bad boy Spencer, told Good Morning America she was relieved Conrad wasn’t returning.

“I actually was kind of excited Lauren wasn’t on it because I felt like it was more freeing and fair, like, for me,” she said.

“She was always the leader, the one that told you what to do, what not to do,” Patridge added. “So now you kinda get to make your own choices and be your own self.”

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Ex cast members Brody Jenner, Spencer Pratt, Stephanie Pratt, Frankie Delgado, Jason Wahler and newcomers Mischa Barton and Kaitlynn Carter also joined the reboot, which is slated for a second season.

The Hills: New Beginnings is available to stream on Binge