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Fun ultimately was the motivation behind Montag’s most notorious late-aughts moment: getting 10 plastic surgery procedures in one day. She appeared on the cover of People magazine in January 2010 afterwards with the headline “Addicted to Plastic Surgery,” a heavy, grim way to describe an experience Montag actually felt great about at the time.
“I definitely was really made fun of for my chin and things like that, but was that the reason I decided to get plastic surgery? No,” she says. “It was because I always wanted it, and I was offered it for free by a top plastic surgeon. I’m like, ‘Amazing, OK, because I can’t afford it, and that’s huge.’ And so what an opportunity to have free cosmetic surgery by one of the best surgeons in the entire world.”
“Thrilled” with the results of her surgery, Montag felt even more ready to drop Superficial, which she and Pratt put $2 million of their own money into making. “I definitely wanted to be a pop star as a kid,” she says. “I thought I’d go the Madonna route. That was definitely my goal.”
Montag and Pratt hired a dream team of hitmakers like Cathy Dennis (a ‘90s pop star turned songwriter, whose credits include Britney Spears’ “Toxic”) and Stacy Barthe (behind Rihanna’s “Cheers (Drink to That)”) to get the best material. She was so confident in her product, she boldly declared Superficial was better than Michael Jackson’s Thriller. And to her credit, the record slaps. It’s 12 tracks, no skips. Every song sounds glossy and expensive, with addictive hooks right on par with the decadent club bangers Kesha and Katy Perry were pumping out at the time.
But the public decided Montag’s fun was over. She was ridiculed for her plastic surgery and lost lucrative business deals because of it. (“We can’t work with you, you’re now ‘Surgery Girl,’” she recalls one brand saying to her.) Meanwhile, Superficial was lambasted by critics and sold only 1,000 copies its first week. Surgery recovery was brutal, as well—Montag tells me she “almost died” from complications.
“It just was a really challenging time,” she says. “It was challenging to navigate so many different things and different relationships and the healing that it took, the toll that it took, physically, mentally, emotionally. It was a lot more than I was ready for…I just really refocused and re-shifted everything I had been thinking about and wanting.”
So the couple moved to Costa Rica briefly. Montag chucked all her designer clothes and prioritized “meditating, praying, and taking it one day at a time.” In the decade that followed, she and Pratt found equilibrium. They moved back to L.A., had children, and popped in and out of TV on reality shows like Celebrity Big Brother and Marriage Boot Camp. A Hills revival in 2019 was short-lived. All the while, Pratt’s growing TikTok presence began showing him in a new light; he was goofy, playful, and Taylor Swift-obsessed. Fans felt endeared to him.
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