Reality Check

The Hills, the insanely popular MTV docu-drama which follows the pastel-hued lives of Lauren, Heidi, Whitney and Audrina, is a show that for the past few seasons has remained a safe, arm's-length distance away from our reality. That is until this season, when Whitney and Lauren landed jobs working for longtime PAPER friend Kelly Cutrone, who helms fashion PR house People's Revolution. As Whitney and Lauren's no nonsense, clad in all black, oft-frazzled boss, Kelly is a refreshing antidote to their former, much more reserved Teen Vogue boss-lady Lisa Love. Kelly, along with her partners Emily Bungert and Robyn Berkley, were nice enough to chat with us about what it's like living and witnessing the reality TV life.

Alexis Swerdloff: How have things changed since you guys started the show?

Emily Bungert: My life hasn't changed much except that I have gotten tons of emails from people, fans of the show, people I never would have expected to watch it. People in PR, from magazines, in the industry -- not teenagers.

Robyn Berkley: I was at a very pop culture, magazine party two weeks ago and I was hardly on the last episodes and people were like, "Oh my god I saw you on The Hills, you were really great!"

Kelly Cutrone: I have gotten a lot of emails -- the first person I ever had sex with emailed me and one of my oldest drinking buddies. It's been like Facebook times a million. I was at the grocery store yesterday and these girls were like "People's Revolution is here!" We've been getting crank calls, "Hi it's so and so from Teen Vogue…" Sometimes I get on the phone just for fun and say, "Hi, I know you're full of shit" and they scream, "ahh!" and hang up.

AS: Why do you think The Hills is so hugely, hugely popular?

KC: I think it's popular with people either because a) they dream of having a life like that or b) they have a life like that. People are either watching their day being reflected or it's young people and their moms who get to watch four really beautiful young women. In a world filled with a ton of violence, watching a show where the biggest drama is a curling iron burning an Albert Ferretti dress, it's kind of like Valium. Also, we work in PR and are communicators and this is an interesting form of communication. And it's not like we're the center of it, we're a backdrop for all these young, beautiful girls.

EB: It's strangely addicting, I don't understand why. You just get sucked in...

AS: On a scale of 1-10, how truthful is what we see on television?

KC: 10! I can only talk about the parts that they film with us, but it's totally unscripted. There's always some sort of drama here, so we don't have to make that up. MTV is really happy about our agency -- it's full of things going on. It's like, um, OK, we have an opportunity to go to Coachella to film a Jeremy Scott party at Frank Sinatra's house. That's just how we roll. We'd never be involved in a scripted show. MTV definitely works with us and sometimes we throw the girls in more intense situations than we'd throw another intern into. But they have the experience and I was surprised at how high their skill sets were. I shot Whitney a sheet of paper with a model lineup, never told her how to do a model lineup -- like what to do if there are two girls named Tatiana -- and she did it and I was pretty impressed.

RB: I've worked with both Lauren and Whitney and they can actually adjust themselves to situations. To call models for a fashion show and not to freak out is hard -- both of them did a pretty good job.

EB: Whitney has a lot of great confidence, which I liked. When we had her work at the Sass & Bide show, she was able to take command in certain ways and wasn't afraid to yell for the models and make sure things are happening.

KC: It's actually a real bonus having them work here. Last week, we were having a staff meeting, and we were talking about Robin Antin's show and Whitney says, well, why don't we use her Pussycat Dolls connections to do celebrity outreach. It was a very simple idea, but here is this girl, in the second week on the job, in a meeting like that, it takes a lot of balls to speak up -- Oh my god, Joan Jett just confirmed me on Facebook!

AS: Ah, exciting! Does it bother you at all that you're a bit villainized and made to look really scary?

KC: People's Revolution is not a Zen place filled with daffodils. We, as partners, are a very transparent agency. We're girls that have black hair and wear all black. You don't have to guess what's going on with us. You know... we're super hard working, our hours are sick. We're like a very good private school, but more like Little Red than Brearley. We're actually teaching people a craft, and it's a combination of setting the bar of expectation really high, correcting them when they do something wrong and thanking and encouraging them when they do something brilliant. And you know, people love to hate. I'm used to it -- I have black hair and I wear no makeup, people always think I'm bitchy.

AS: When the cameras start rolling, how do you adjust?

KC: We kind of have to downplay our real selves. Today for example, we had a meeting at Casio. The assistants don't have the right stuff, so we're yelling at them, I'm securing everything with a paperclip and wondering whether we want a jumbo-clip or a cute little paperclip. We're in this Ford Explorer with a bumper sticker that says "Proud to be a Sioux" (and I'm not a Sioux) and Robin is sitting in the back next to a car-seat and we manage to get to the Casio office in New Jersey five minutes early and there are all these geese out front, and geese are really mean, so I tell everyone to quack at the geese. So we're all quacking really loudly at the geese. And then after the meeting, we go to this diner and I'm wearing Marni, Yohji and Prada and we are like Charlie's Angels with BlackBerrys descending on this diner. And it has like an 80 page menu, and we all have these crazy diets, and I order only hot turkey and they ask if I want stuffing and cranberry sauce and I'm like, "no just hot turkey," and Robin does her thing and Emily has a cheeseburger and we don't talk, we're on our BlackBerrys the whole time. So yeah, on the show, we're less bizarre. If we were our real selves, PETA would be calling us for how we quacked at the geese.

AS: If you were approached about doing a straight-up People's Revolution reality show, would you do it?

KC: We've been offered several and we've declined. I don't think any of us want to be TV stars, but we have some show ideas that we'd like to develop...

AS: Can you give us any tidbits about upcoming episodes?

KC: All I can say is that there are going to be serious changes in our L.A. office...