As the OG Laguna Beach cast reunites to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the MTV series on The Reunion: Laguna Beach, Stephen Colletti is explaining how Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake unknowingly prevented the show from stepping foot on campus at Laguna Beach High School (LBHS).
On Wednesday’s episode of Teen Beat with Danielle Fishel, Stephen– who was joined by fellow ‘Laguna Beach’ alum Trey Phillips– was asked about the filming schedule for him and his castmates, who were all either juniors or seniors at LBHS when ‘Laguna Beach’ premiered in 2004.
According to The Traitors star, the cast didn’t have to film during school hours, though only because the LBHS Parent Teacher Association (PTA) had MTV kicked off campus.
“Yeah, so they originally were going to be on campus, but it was right at the time where MTV was in charge of the Super Bowl halftime shows,” Stephen explained, as reported by People. “And that year was the Justin Timberlake, Janet Jackson infamous moment– the wardrobe malfunction.
“So that actually happened the week after they had met us, and then all the bad PR from that,” he continued. “PTA was like, ‘Get these people off campus. We don’t want MTV at our school.’ So, they made a decision.”
For those who don’t remember the 2004 halftime show, Janet Jackson was the headliner and Justin Timberlake came out during her performance as a surprise guest, at which point the two performed together. At the end of the show, Justin tore off Janet’s top and exposed her bare breast live on TV– much to the dismay of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
In addition to Janet and Justin’s grand finale fashion faux pas earning MTV a ban from the LBHS campus, the incident earned CBS a fine from the FCC for “indecent content,” according to People, which was later voided.
Due to the bare-breast backlash, MTV found itself under a microscope, though the network decided to move forward with production on ‘Laguna Beach,’ despite not being permitted to step foot on campus.
“They were like, ‘All right, we’re not going to shoot them at school anymore, but we’ve already met everybody. We’re still green lit. Let’s go ahead and do this thing,’” Stephen recalled. “So we did not shoot– of course not on campus, but not 24/7, at all.”
As fans of ‘Laguna Beach’ may recall, the cast was never shown interacting on-campus during the show’s three-season run, nor was the LBHS campus shown at all. Instead, cameras captured the cast living their day-to-day lives off-campus. Stephen said the filming schedule for the series was “pretty relaxed,” with the group typically filming two days a week.
“ … it wasn’t asking a lot of us at that age, and they were cautious of how much time that they used with us knowing that, you know, we still had school to go to and stuff,” he said. “But it was also second semester [of our] senior year … we were checked out.”
‘The Reunion: Laguna Beach’ is now streaming on The Roku Channel.
Watch a clip from Stephen and Trey’s interview below.
(Photos: MTV; Instagram; YouTube)
