For most of us, the sensation that you’re a character in a TV show is a fleeting, deluded one that happens when the right music plays in a dramatically lit hallway. But for Whitney Port the bit where you then fall over doesn’t happen. Or it does, but the cameras keep rolling and she’s then complimented on how gracefully she gets up.
Those of you already submerged in this weird, MTV reality phenomenon will get the reference to Port’s devastating fall in the second season of The Hills — but a quick blurb for the rest of you.
Started in 2006 after the success of Laguna Beach (“the real Orange County”), The Hills follows a real group of LA twentysomethings through the minutiae of their dramatic, overindulged lives. It’s reality TV — except that the “characters” don’t acknowledge the cameras and it’s edited to look like a glossy drama. Confusing — and compelling. Lauren Conrad, her bitchy friend Heidi Montag and Heidi’s hateful boyfriend (now husband, shudder), Spencer Pratt, have now been feuding for five, hopelessly addictive seasons.
Amid this crossfire of bitchery, 24-year-old Port, a gazelle-like blonde who dreams of working in fashion, quickly became known as the sensible one and was awarded her own spin-off show in New York, The City. Currently Port has a few weeks away from the cameras — the second season wrapped a few weeks ago and is soon to air — but you wouldn’t know it. She’s poised, swan-like, on the edge of her seat, her hair knotted up neatly as she sits with her back to an opulent hotel suite, staring out of the window. She probably knows that she’s in for a grilling. There’s a politely disguised sense of boredom about her.
“Nothing is scripted, nothing . . .” she begins. “I would never have decided to do this if it was. We didn’t sign up as actresses.”The “we” refers to Port’s “co-stars”, the willing friends and colleagues that the producers have deemed to be valuable “characters” in the show. In season one the main ones were Olivia “don’t-believe-the-smile” Palermo, her back-stabbing colleague at the fashion house of the designer Diane von Furstenberg, and Jay Lyon, an Australian musician whom Port started dating amid vicious rumours of his infidelity (they have now broken up, and she is seeing somebody new but won’t reveal whom).
About Palermo, Port says: “She and I are definitely amicable. We’re not ‘frenemies’, or enemies for that matter. We’re just not the best of friends.” Doesn’t Palermo mind being portrayed as the evil one? “I think that she minds, and I don’t think she doesn’t want to do it any more. I think she must like the attention.”
But what about spontaneous events? Surely they restage things? “There will be times where maybe our mikes got messed up and we’ll have to re-say things, and things of that sort, but not much else,” she says. “If the cameras don’t catch something, they don’t catch it.”
Port’s jobs have included being a contributor at Teen Vogue, then a role at the fashion PR firm People’s Revolution, before going to work for von Furstenberg, but did she really work at any of them? “Well, they were more like a freelance sort of job. I was there more than just when we were filming, but they had to understand that this [The City] is a job for me as well.”
But surely she can’t deny the editing. A barbed comment from Palermo is met with a close-up of Port’s silent pout at least once in every show. “Well, a lot of the time I feel like I have more to say, and I have said more, but they make me seem too easygoing or taken advantage of,” she admits. “But I understand that they’re trying to tell a story, so the way they edit, add music and magnify things with facial expressions is their prerogative.”
Growing up on the affluent Westside of LA, Port went to a private liberal arts high school, surrounded by “celebrity kids”. She was majoring in gender studies at the University of Southern California when she started working at Teen Vogue with Conrad. But, unlike many of her “co-stars”, fame wasn’t the goal for Port.
“I just don’t think it’s that cool,” she says with a laugh, finally dropping her straight face. “Growing up I was constantly surrounded by this kind of lifestyle, glamour, whatever, and I was never really that impressed by it. Being on TV was never a dream of mine.”
So why does she do it? Following in Conrad and Montag’s footsteps, in the first season of The City Port launched her first clothing line, which, she says, she’s been working towards since she worked at her father’s fashion company during school holidays. “It was definitely a driving force in deciding to do the show. I know the show won’t last for ever, but I’ll keep doing it until I get sick of it, and I hope I can continue my clothing line afterwards.”
She says she’ll never go into acting, but Port’s life nevertheless seems to revolve around filming, rather than vice versa. Since season two wrapped, she’s been taking a break in LA, her TV career in hiatus until the ratings come in.
So, for the fans — what can we expect in the new season? “Last season I left off feeling kind of lost, and this season I’m regrouping and finding my way in New York. I’m starting my spring collection, and my school friend Roxy comes to stay. There’s another side story with Olivia ... and there’s some dating. I think it’s kind of like a young, fun version of Sex and the City,” she says, before catching herself. “A more reality version, of course.”
credit - timesonline.co.uk
