Spencer Pratt Leaked Teen Photos of Mary-Kate Olsen Partying to Press for $50,000
Spencer Pratt is looking back at life before The Hills.
In his new memoir The Guy You Loved to Hate: Confessions from a Reality TV Villain, which is out now, Spencer, 42, revealed that when he was in high school, he sold photos of a teenage Mary-Kate Olsen to the press for $50K.
Keep reading to find out more…Spencer said that he wanted to direct his own film, but didn’t have the funds to do so, so he tapped into a “wasted resource” with the help of Mary-Kate‘s ex-boyfriend Max Winkler, who is also the son of Henry Winkler.
According to Spencer, Max had a “photo shrine” in bedroom dedicated to Mary-Kate, whom he had recently split from. Describing the photos as “young love documented in European hotels, Hollywood parties, stolen moments,” Spencer said that he urged his friend to take them down.
“I asked Max if I could take the photos off his wall — you know, for his healing process,” Spencer wrote, per People. “He didn’t say no, so I took that to be a yes.”
When he went to visit the Winkler house, Spencer said that he greeted Henry as he walked in and left with all of the photos of Max and Mary-Kate.
He ended up selling the photos to an photo agency for $50,000, a price he said made him feel “rich” at the time.
“Less than a week later there it was, evidence of my entrepreneurial genius staring back at me from the InTouch cover at a gas station: ‘TEENS GONE WILD!’ across the cover,” Spencer wrote of the 2004 tabloid news story.
“A shot of Mary-Kate with a constellation of empties—‘LOOK AT ALL THE EMPTIES!’—and there I was in the background, frozen mid-shaka,” he continued. “I hadn’t sold that frame. Someone else was shopping, and now I wasn’t just the seller, I was part of the merchandise. My face was now forever linked to Mary-Kate Olsen’s supposed wild phase, preserved in grocery store checkout lines across America.”
Now more than 20 years later, Spencer still defends his decision to sell the photos.
“When you really think about it, it was a win-win,” he wrote. “Mary-Kate got her rebel rebrand, Max got closure.”
If you didn’t see, Spencer announced he’s running for political office.