Heidi Montag claims she and husband Spencer Pratt used to be ‘bigger than the Kardashians’ but were BANNED by E! in order to launch Kim’s career and reality show

Heidi Montag has revealed that the E! network banned coverage of herself and husband Spencer Pratt at the height of their fame so that the network could catapult the Kardashians onto the A-list.

Appearing on the Just Trish podcast, the 37-year-old shared her own ‘conspiracy’ theory about how she and Spencer were sabotaged to make Kim Kardashian famous.

‘E! banned us! So our stories and everything used to do the best. They would cover everything we’d do – we were bigger than the Kardashians on E! with our numbers and the likes on posts and everything,’ she explained.

‘So then the teams at E! decided to stop covering us and ban us, and they did that for like two years,’ she continued.

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‘We were like, ‘Who do you ban?!” That’s ridiculous.’

DailyMail.com has reached out to E! for comment on the matter.

The Superficial singer then revealed how the growing popularity of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, which launched in 2007, may have had something to do with she and Spencer fading from the spotlight.

‘My conspiracy is that it had to also do with the Kardashians, because that was [E!’s] reality show and that was the content and that’s when Kim started being really big, so they were like, “Forget Speidi”,’ she said.

The E! network did indeed ban The Hills stars back in 2009 following a public poll they put to their readers at the time.

‘If Heidi’s album went to No. 1, that would be a newsworthy thing. If they were to become parents, we’d see that as worth noting. If something did happen to them, physically, we’d probably cover that,’ E! said in a statement at the time.’

‘But ultimately, we were looking at it more like avoiding stories about them walking down Robertson or going to dinner,’ they continued.

‘It was just a question of overexposure and wondering how much of the news about them was truly news or contrived. It just started to feel as if they had maybe jumped a shark in the past couple of weeks and it might be time to just take a rest.’

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Heidi and Spencer shot to fame on MTV’s The Hills in 2006 and by 2009 their public profile was at an all time high.

They frequently covered tabloid magazines like Us Weekly, People, and Life & Style, and published a book about their celebrity status called How to Be Famous: Our Guide to Looking the Part, Playing the Press, and Becoming a Tabloid Fixture.

Heidi even performed for an audience of one billion people at the 2009 Miss Universe pageant.

The Hills was canceled in 2010 and the couple spent several years out of the spotlight before later reinventing themselves as social media stars on platforms like Snapchat.

In 2021, Spencer claimed that Kim Kardashian and her famous family copied him and his wife Heidi’s ‘paparazzi set-up’ strategy to catapult themselves to fame.

‘I know for a fact that they copied our paparazzi set-up deal with the same agency we worked with, obviously they won’t say that but I can say that,’ he told The Sun.

‘They have the same partnership, they probably had a better end deal but whatever.’

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Explaining the strategy, Heidi said she and Spencer made it a priority to have even their dullest moments turned into headline worthy photos, while others left being captured by the paparazzi up to chance.

‘I think without paparazzi styled like our setups were, and what we would do in the beach bikini photos… Other people will go out to the beach, they wouldn’t set it up and work with the photographer,’ she told the outlet.

Heidi went on to praise the Kardashian-Jenner clan for allegedly ’emulating’ the blueprint they laid out, adding that it was a ‘very smart’ move for the family.

‘So I do think a lot of that blueprint they emulated, which was very smart and that was kind of the standard that we set for the industry and I feel like people still do that.’

Heidi claimed that her sister Holly had once spoken to Kim’s eldest sister Kourtney Kardashian about arranging paparazzi set-ups before KUWTK fame.

‘But I do remember a conversation that [Kim’s sister] Kourtney had with my sister and she’s like: “What does Heidi do with paparazzi? Scott and I are trying to do the same thing,”‘ she recalled.

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Although the couple have given themselves credit for ‘setting the standard’ when it comes to using the paparazzi to one’s advantage, Spencer stressed to The Sun that Paris Hilton was undoubtedly the force that inspired most – if not all – aspiring reality stars and socialites.

Prior to becoming one of the most famous women in the world, Kim was Paris’ personal assistant/stylist for many years, prior to the premiere of Keeping Up With The Kardashians in 2007.

‘Kim owes it to Paris. Maybe Kim learned a lot from us, and Kim was around us a lot, but I feel like Kris Jenner, even if Speidi didn’t come along, would have had that whole family, rich and famous and successful regardless,’ he said.

Although Kim is said to have had plenty of people in her corner, Heidi made sure to take a moment to praise the Skims founder for her incomparable work ethic, which solidified her superstar status.

Heidi claimed that Kardashian would go to ‘multiple events in one night’ completely sober, just to get her name and face out there.

‘They used to say Kim would go to the opening of an envelope, literally she would do multiple events in one night, sober, and know everybody’s name and do everything like she was a machine,’ Montag recalled.

‘From the moment I met her, too. So definitely, Kim was going to be successful one way or another.’

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Agreeing with his wife, Spencer added: ‘I used to literally say it was either opening an envelope or she’d be at the opening of a drawer.’

He admitted that Kim’s dedication to achieving fame and success often inspired him to ‘hustle’ in the industry.

‘I was always thinking like: “I gotta hustle”, and I was looking at Kim like: “If we worked as hard as Kim…” and this is before she was even famous!

‘[Kim] was at events that I felt like we were too good for – now give me a time machine, I would have been anywhere for that red carpet and camera like she did.’

Even though some of their own tactics may have been used by the Kardashian-Jenner family, Spencer and Heidi insist that they have nothing but respect for the family’s meteoric rise to fame.

‘Anyone who is famous has earned it. It’s so hard to be famous is what I’ve learned over 15 years of continually try to be 15 minutes of famous,’ said Pratt.