Someone born in 2004, the year Laguna Beach first aired, is now old enough to drink legally. In that same period of time, Kristin Cavallari, the show’s then-17-year-old protagonist, has made a career out of sharing her life with the world. But there’s one thing she has kept out of the spotlight until now: Kristin Cavallari the mom.
The early aughts were a revolutionary time for reality TV. To put things in perspective, the first season of any Real Housewives franchise wouldn’t air for another two years after Laguna began. This means Cavallari and her signature bleach-blond hair are a very specific kind of reality star: one who was around before the advent of social media, and perhaps better off because of it. For Cavallari, Laguna Beach was just the beginning. Next came a spinoff, The Hills, which tracked members of Laguna’s high school clique in the “real world.” Then came Very Cavallari, another spinoff that honed in on her life in Nashville, her Uncommon James jewelry brand, and her relationship with her now-ex husband Jay Cutler. Cavallari has since expanded Uncommon James into a beauty line, Uncommon Beauty—also a spinoff, if you will—and started Let’s Be Honest with Kristin Cavallari, a weekly podcast.
Now she’s back on TV for the first time in five years with Honestly Cavallari: The Headline Tour, an E! reality series that documents a slate of live podcast shows she did with special guests across the country over a week in March 2025. There are villains, there are attractive men, and there is drama. It’s not Cavallari’s first reality rodeo—it’s her fourth, if you do the math—but the experience marked a number of firsts nonetheless. Her first time on tour, her first time performing live, and also the first time her kids, Camden, 12, Jaxson, 11, and Saylor, 9, were on TV alongside her.
“I don’t want people to be like, oh, all of a sudden she’s putting her kids out everywhere,” Cavallari says over Zoom, sitting in the bright, airy living room that’s become the signature backdrop of her podcast recordings. “They were on the podcast, and they were in a couple scenes on the show, and now I’ll pull back. You’re not going to see them anymore, besides the occasional post on Instagram.”
Ahead of The Headline Tour’s final episode, we caught up with Cavallari about her latest TV era—and the choice to do it with her children.
What was it like having your kids around cameras and entering a world that’s been a huge part of your life for more than 20 years?
I always said that I wanted my kids to be old enough to make the decision about whether to be on social media for themselves. I didn’t want to make it for them, because a lot of people don’t want their lives out there. But a couple of years ago, they really started asking me to post them. I slowly started to just post Camden, my oldest, at first. But when you’ve got three kids and the oldest starts doing something, the other ones just sort of naturally are right behind. It’s like how I’ve said in my perfect world, all of my kids would’ve waited to get a cell phone until age 12. Camden got one for his twelfth birthday, and then Jaxon got one, and then Saylor got one, and it just kind of is what it is.
