The “Hills” are alive with the sound of COVID-era revelations.
Reality series “The Hills: New Beginnings,” returns Wednesday with a long-stalled second season — and is a far cry from the carefree partying and carefully edited dueling of season one and the original ‘Hills,’” castmates told the Daily News.
“People are very vulnerable on the show this time around,” said Brody Jenner. “We all know each other better now. It really is, all in all, a much better season.”
Filming endured unavoidable stops and erratic starts amid the uncertainties of the coronavirus pandemic over the past year.
“It took a long time, but we definitely got what we were looking for, for sure,” said Jenner, 37, a regular fixture on the original “Hills.”
“New Beginnings” premiered in 2019 and reunited alumni of “The Hills” — which ran from 2006 to 2010 — including Jenner, Audrina Patridge, Heidi Montag and husband Spencer Pratt, Justin “Justin Bobby” Brescia and Frankie Delgado.
The show also brought in new faces like Brandon Thomas, son of musician Tommy Lee and actress Pamela Anderson.
“I do miss [then-star] Lauren Conrad on the show. I miss that dynamic we used to have between all of us back then, ‘cause we were all also in a different place of our life,” Delgado, 39, told The News. “It was a lot easier to film with nothing to lose.”
Now a family man, Delgado says the stakes are infinitely higher.
“For me to be getting into these arguments and fights and dramatic moments … They can destroy people’s lives,” he said.
But the series still doesn’t show all.
“There’s a lot of my life that’s not on the show, unfortunately,” Patridge, 35, told The News, noting her “getting back out there and dating” will feature this season.
The stop and start of the show — and of Patridge’s then-budding relationship with Jenner — made the experience “tough at times,” she explained, adding the pair’s “flirty thing” was upended by COVID. “And then when we all got back together, things were definitely different.”
This season shows Montag and Pratt, who share son Gunner, resuming their discussion of having a second child.
Though it might not track with storylines of the original “Hills,” Montag, 34, said the new season shows one of the first times the couple, cast in more of a protagonist than antagonist light, “were on such different pages with such a life-altering decision” in their more than decadelong marriage.
“That was challenging for us,” Montag said, adding the two have spent the past several months trying for a baby.
“I felt like the time was right for our relationship,” said Pratt, 37. “But the pandemic added just a new layer to life. … In [Heidi’s] body and spirit, it felt like the right time. But then for me, looking at the outside world, it’s like, ‘This just does not feel right for me.’”
The fraught past year also altered Brescia’s mindset, changing him from a noncommittal tough guy wearing combat boots to the beach to a man considering settling down.
Though coronavirus “put a lot of things into perspective” for the 39-year-old‚ who says he’s “taking a stab at a different side of life,” Brescia admitted the world as it begins to reopen “makes me kinda wanna run again.”
Lee, for his part, agrees the sophomore season shows a different side of the cast that “fits together a little more” this time around.
“This year, it’s interesting. I feel like everyone’s got a lot to say,” said the actor, 24. “Everyone just had so many frustrations built up over COVID and last season too, things that weren’t said that have been sort of lingering.”
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“The Hills: New Beginnings” returns to MTV Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
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