Kristin Cavallari is back on reality TV, but she’s no villain

NASHVILLE — Kristin Cavallari was 17 years old when casting directors showed up at her high school. Fox’s primetime drama “The O.C.” was a surprise hit, and savvy MTV executives were eager to replicate the formula – wealthy teenagers, sunsoaked locales, untold amounts of drama – for something called a “docu-soap,” a new subgenre in the early days of reality television. Producers spent weeks at Laguna Beach High School in Southern California before they stumbled across Cavallari, an outspoken junior who was dating Stephen Colletti, a popu- lar senior who worked at a surf shop. They also discovered Lauren Conrad, a girl-next-door type who had a crush on Colletti. Three photogenic teens in a classic love triangle? Jackpot! One MTV development executive called his colleague and said simply, “We have it.” “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County” debuted in September 2004, post-”Real World” but pre-”Real Housewives.” The trio became tabloid favorites, and no one more so than Cavallari. Branded as the show’s “bad girl,” due to her tumultuous relationship with Colletti and feuds with classmates, Cavallari had the mind-bending experience of becoming one of our culture’s first reality TV villains when she was barely old enough to have a driver’s license. “I didn’t look at myself as a star. I looked at it more like, ‘Everybody hates me,’” Cavallari, now 31, said during a recent interview in Nashville. She lives here with her husband, former Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler, and their three children. “That was really tough for me, being so young.” She cried when she first saw how she was portrayed on “Laguna,” but after awhile, being controversial just felt normal – and she embraced it. Years later, she returned to spin-off “The Hills” where she happily agreed on her tagline: “The Bitch is Back.” Now, she’s the star and executive producer of “Very Cavallari,” which airs Sunday nights on E! and chronicles her adventures as she opens a store in Nashville for her lifestyle brand, Uncommon James. She wants her fans to see the grown-up version of herself, the working mom who runs her own business. A nameplate in her office reads “I’m CEO, Bitch.” “Do I want to be the villain? No. Because I’m a mom, I’m a wife, and I just don’t think that’s who I am,” Cavallari said. “I have that tough side to me still, but I don’t think it’s the only side to me. I don’t think it ever was the only side to me. I think that was the one side that they decided to show.” After nearly 15 years of living in front of cameras, Cavallari is accustomed to criticism. Some is mild, such as last month, when she posted a photo that jokingly called her pet chicken “dinner.” Some is more severe – in 2014, she revealed in a TV interview that she and Cutler don’t vaccinate their kids, alluding to the disproven idea that vaccinations can lead to autism. Even after enormous backlash for citing a false claim, she doubled down in follow-up interviews. “At the time, I was kind of feeling down about it. But you know what it did, it forced me to then go and do even more research than I had done prior, and I’m even more confident in my decision now,” Cavallari said.