Lauren Conrad is happy to dispel a sad rumor.
Ahead of the MTV special The Hills: That Was Then, This Is Now, premiering Aug. 2 at 9 p.m., Conrad reflected on one of her more memorable moments from the hit reality show's fourth season. In one scene, while talking with Audrina Patridge, Conrad shed a single black tear. To her surprise, the makeup mishap later became one of the most popular GIFs on the Internet. Speaking to MTV News, Conrad, now 30, recalled, "I don't think it was the mascara. I think it was the eyeliner that was running. I still wear the same mascara, and it doesn't run like that."
For years, Conrad—like many viewers—assumed her mascara was to blame. And, in a 2013 Cosmopolitan article, Conrad said, "You know that they slowed it down in the show right? I asked my producer and he told me they put it in slow motion to give it a more dramatic effect. That day it was filmed I was really sad—and I wasn't wearing waterproof mascara. Whoops."
But Adam DiVello, The Hills' creator and executive producer, said the iconic shot of Conrad crying "just happened" and "became a thing." As he told Refinery29 in April, "You're watching little monitors, and when you get that like black eyeliner roll, you're just like, 'Damn, this is so great.'" Because The Hills didn't use to-camera confessionals, à la The Real World or The Real Housewives, he explained, "We have no other device to tell stories other than something like a black mascara line running down her face. You clearly notice she's upset, and that's so far and few between. Other than the help of music, that's really all we have, so those were extremely helpful to us and they kind of became Lauren's hallmark...We got so many letters that were like, 'Why didn't she wear waterproof mascara?,' and I never could answer that. I didn't know."
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