Laguna Beach alum Jason Wahler remembers the exact moment he knew his life was going to change. According to him, it happened before the first episode of the popular show ever aired.
On April 28, Jason appeared on Carl Radke’s More Life podcast. During the show, Jason shared how quickly his life changed after the first ad for Laguna Beach dropped in 2004.
At the time, Jason shared, he was already privately dealing with mental health issues and a teenage identity crisis. In addition, he had legal problems.
The reality TV star focused on “a false sense of reality”
“Imagine everything that I was [experiencing] at 17, 18 — identity crisis, going to treatment, dealing with the law, mental health issues,” Jason said. Suddenly, MTV dropped the commercial that catapulted him and his friends into overnight celebrity.
“The moment that the commercial airs for Laguna Beach, I go down to the gas station in Laguna,” he remembered. “I went down there, and it was like Justin Bieber got out of the car. So it was just crazy, the notoriety that happened from it.”
Unfortunately, the overwhelming attention was just a distraction from the deeper personal issues he’d been avoiding.
“All that stuff that I wasn’t dealing with was completely pushed to the side,” Jason admitted. “And I was like, ‘I can focus on this.'”
Though fame created a false sense of reality and a deflection from all he was going through, he leaned into it. Looking back, Jason said it was surreal how suddenly everything in his life changed, seemingly overnight.
As Laguna Beach quickly became one of MTV’s most popular shows, Jason found himself living a life he’d never imagined. But along with the fame, came the pressure of maintaining the image viewers saw on the screen.
When audiences expected him to be the person they saw on TV, he decided to “play that persona.”
“At 18 years old, we were living the dream,” he concluded. “I mean, at least what we thought was the dream … We’re literally being paid to party and, like, travel the world.”
TELL US – WERE YOU A FAN OF LAGUNA BEACH?
