• Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag were photographed having breakfast in Carpinteria, CA, with no security present
• Pratt has cited death threats as the reason he’s been staying at the Hotel Bel-Air rather than his fire-damaged Pacific Palisades property
• A new Emerson College poll shows Pratt at 22% — just behind incumbent Mayor Karen Bass at 30% — ahead of the June 3 primary
• Chelsea Handler publicly slammed Pratt’s candidacy, and he clapped back by sharing a clip of Shane Gillis roasting her at the Netflix Kevin Hart roast
• Heidi Montag’s two-word tweet — “Wake up” — racked up nearly 188,000 views and over 9,500 likes over the weekend

Spencer Pratt has apparently found his version of a safe haven — and it’s about two hours north of the city he’s trying to run.

Photos obtained by TMZ show Pratt and his wife, Heidi Montag, wrapping up breakfast Monday morning at Corazon Cocina Sur in Carpinteria, California — a small, laid-back seaside city in Santa Barbara County that bills itself as the “World’s Safest Beach.” The couple appeared relaxed and in good spirits, with no security detail in sight. Pratt wore a black Heidiwood t-shirt, shorts, and a hat. Montag kept it equally casual. The restaurant looked mostly empty.

The low-key outing comes as Pratt’s Los Angeles mayoral campaign has become anything but. He’s previously told TMZ that he’s been staying at the ritzy Hotel Bel-Air — not the Airstream trailer prominently featured in his campaign ads — specifically because of death threats, and because the hotel has its own armed security. His campaign dropped a new ad Monday morning, right around the time the Carpinteria photos were taken, leaning directly into that controversy rather than running from it.

If Carpinteria feels like a dry run for something more permanent, that might not be accidental. Pratt told The Adam Carolla Show this weekend that he’s ready to walk away from LA entirely if things don’t go his way: “If Karen Bass gets reelected or Nithya [Raman] gets elected, I will be done with trying to live in LA.”

The Race Is Tighter Than Anyone Expected

For all the noise around the hotel-vs.-trailer story, the actual polling numbers are the real headline. A new Emerson College survey shows incumbent Mayor Karen Bass leading with 30% support — but Pratt is right behind her at 22%, with Councilmember Nithya Raman at 19%. The top two finishers in the June 3 primary advance to a November runoff, which means Pratt is genuinely in contention.

He’s also raised serious money. The latest financial disclosures show Pratt has pulled in more than $538,000 — just edging out Raman’s $530,000, though Bass, who started fundraising for reelection back in 2024, sits on a $2.3 million war chest.

The celebrity backing has been notable. Grammy-winning producer David Foster and his wife Katharine McPhee hosted a fundraiser at their Brentwood home, where McPhee performed a customized version of Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best” for the campaign. Paris Hilton — who, like Pratt, lost her home in the Palisades fire — has also publicly endorsed him. And rumors have been circulating in conservative circles that a Trump endorsement could be coming. When asked about it, Pratt responded in classic form: with a GIF of himself.

Bass, for her part, has raised concerns about the tone of the race, saying Pratt’s messaging has turned “violent” on social media. AI-generated ads — many made by supporters, not the official campaign — depict her as a fictional villain being pelted with blood-red tomatoes. She’s called it a “dangerous trend” that risks provoking unstable individuals.

Chelsea Handler Steps In, and Pratt Fires Back Hard

The campaign got another jolt of drama over the weekend when Chelsea Handler posted a TikTok taking direct aim at Pratt. Glass in hand, she delivered her verdict: “Oh, hi, if you’re seeing this video, this is a reminder that a straight, white male former reality star that has no previous experience in government should not be a legitimate political candidate.” The video was captioned “Have we not learned anything?”

Pratt’s response was swift and pointed. He shared a clip from the Netflix Roast of Kevin Hart, hosted by Shane Gillis, in which Gillis roasted Handler over her attendance at a 2010 dinner party hosted by Jeffrey Epstein — by then already a convicted sex offender and registered for trafficking minors. The party was organized by publicist Peggy Siegal. A year later, Epstein received an invitation to Handler’s book launch through Andre Balazs, her then-boyfriend and owner of the Chateau Marmont, who had planned to host the event at his Boom Boom Room venue in New York’s Meatpacking District.

The Chateau Marmont itself got pulled into the orbit of the story this week — an X account for the hotel posted a message of support for Pratt after news broke about his Hotel Bel-Air accommodations.

Heidi’s Two Words That Broke the Internet

While her husband was trading blows with Handler and campaigning through Silver Lake and the San Fernando Valley, Heidi Montag was busy going viral all on her own — with just two words.

On Saturday, Montag posted to X: “Wake up.” That’s it. No context, no explanation. But the post, sent to her more than one million followers, exploded almost immediately — racking up nearly 188,000 views in hours, over 9,500 likes, and hundreds of comments. Fans and observers flooded her replies with interpretations, many reading it as a quiet signal of support for Pratt’s campaign, others just marveling at the chaos a two-word tweet from a former Hills star could still generate in 2026.

It didn’t mention politics. It didn’t have to. In the Pratt-Montag universe, the subtext does the work.

The primary is June 3. Spencer Pratt is eating breakfast in a small beach town two hours from Los Angeles, his campaign dropping ads, his wife breaking the internet with two words, and a polling position that would have seemed absurd six months ago. Whatever happens next, he’s made sure no one is looking away.

The post Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag Spotted Dining Out Amid Death Threats appeared first on Cream.

• Spencer Pratt fired back at Chelsea Handler after she compared him to Donald Trump in a profanity-laced Instagram video
• A new Emerson College poll shows Pratt in second place with 22%, just eight points behind incumbent Mayor Karen Bass
• Pratt’s team flatly denied reports from TMZ and Deadline that his campaign is being filmed as a reality series for Boardwalk Pictures
• Billionaire donors including Dan Loeb, Bobby Kotick, the Winklevoss twins, and Jeanie Buss have poured money into his campaign
• The L.A. mayoral primary is set for June 2, with a runoff possible if no candidate clears 50%

Spencer Pratt’s run for Los Angeles mayor has officially become one of the most chaotic, compelling, and genuinely hard-to-look-away political stories in the country right now — and that was before Chelsea Handler got involved.

On Friday, May 15, Handler posted a video to Instagram pouring herself a drink and delivering a pointed message about Pratt’s political ambitions. “If you’re seeing this video, this is a reminder that a straight, white male, former reality star that has no previous experience in government should not be a legitimate political candidate,” she said, as photos of Pratt flashed on screen — followed by a goofy shot of Donald Trump. “Have we learned anything yet? The bar is on the f—— floor, people, and I need you to jump over it.”

Pratt, who has never once in his public life backed down from a fight, responded quickly. He posted a clip on X from comedian Shane Gillis’ set at the recent Netflix Kevin Hart roast — specifically the part where Gillis cracks a joke about Handler having attended a dinner at Jeffrey Epstein’s house in 2010, with Prince Andrew and Woody Allen also at the table. The Epstein card. He played it.

Their tension isn’t new. Handler spent years taking shots at Pratt and his wife Heidi Montag on her late-night show Chelsea Lately back in the late 2000s, so this particular feud has been simmering for over a decade. The Handler-Gillis dynamic had already been heating up after an onstage confrontation at the Netflix Is A Joke festival finale at the Kia Forum on May 10, and Pratt clearly saw an opening.

The Polls Are Not Laughing Anymore

What makes this feud genuinely newsworthy — beyond the obvious entertainment value — is that Pratt is no longer a punchline in this race. A new Emerson College Polling/Inside California Politics survey conducted May 9-10 among 1,000 likely primary voters shows incumbent Mayor Karen Bass at 30%, with Pratt right behind her at 22% — more than doubling his support from 10% back in March. L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman sits third at 19%.

Just as striking: the number of undecided voters collapsed from 51% in March to just 16% now. People are making up their minds, and a lot of them are landing on Pratt.

Prediction markets are tracking the shift too. Both Polymarket and Kalshi currently give Bass roughly a 58-59% chance of winning, with Pratt at 25% and Raman at 17-18%. That’s a real number for a guy who got his start as a reality TV villain on MTV.

Bass herself, in a one-on-one interview with ABC7’s Josh Haskell, acknowledged the obvious. “I think he’s tapping into the anger and frustration that people have,” she said. “I think we’re a celebrity-driven culture.” When asked directly whether she thought Pratt knew what it takes to run the second-largest city in the country, she was blunt: “I don’t think he has a clue.”

Pratt launched his campaign in January, one year after the Palisades Fire destroyed his Pacific Palisades home along with more than 18,000 other structures. “We are standing here amongst the ashes of our once beautiful town because the state and local leaders let us burn,” he said at the time. “They all stood by while our community became a tinder box.” Since then, he’s turned that fury into a full anti-establishment campaign targeting Bass, homelessness, public safety, and government corruption — and, apparently, attracting some very serious money along the way.

Billionaires, Fundraisers, and a Katharine McPhee Performance

The donor list that’s coalesced around Pratt would raise eyebrows in any political race. According to the New York Times DealBook, among those backing him financially are hedge fund billionaire Dan Loeb of Third Point Capital, former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, crypto moguls Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, entertainment mogul Haim Saban (estimated net worth: $3.3 billion), Lakers governor Jeanie Buss, Universal Music Group chairman Lucian Grainge, his son Elliot Grainge of Atlantic Music Group, and Hollywood producer Brian Grazer.

Democratic strategist Michael Trujillo put it plainly: “Unfortunately, my entire life is talking to people in the industry, but I can report that everyone was pleasantly — or unpleasantly — surprised by Spencer Pratt’s debate performance.”

The debate in question had 79% of NBC viewers declaring Pratt the winner, according to polling cited in reports. His dismissal of Raman as a “random city council member” went viral almost immediately. “All the unions support Mayor Bass,” he said afterward. “You think it’s easier to run against the incumbent mayor with all the unions, or a random city council member who has been a failure for six years?”

Earlier this week, Katharine McPhee and David Foster hosted a fundraiser at their Brentwood mansion that drew a crowd of entertainment industry heavyweights. McPhee performed a modified version of Tina Turner’s “The Best” with Foster on keys, singing, “You’re simply the best / Better than all the rest / Better than Karen Bass / And Nithya Raman.” She accidentally called Raman “Cynthia” at one point, laughed it off, and Pratt just shrugged.

Perhaps the most eyebrow-raising development on the donor front: Nicole Avant — Hollywood scion, wife of Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, and former Obama-era ambassador — has reportedly indicated she plans to support Pratt. The reaction in Democratic circles was immediate. “What the f-k?” said one veteran political consultant, per Page Six Hollywood. “She’s crossing a line she won’t be able to come back from. She’s done as a Democratic donor.”

Avant had previously backed Rick Caruso in the last mayoral race, which Bass won by nearly 10 points.

The Reality Show That Isn’t (Or Is It?)

The week also brought a wave of reports — from both TMZ and Deadline — claiming Pratt had signed a deal with Boardwalk Pictures (the Santa Monica production company behind Netflix’s AKA Charlie Sheen and FX’s Welcome to Wrexham) to document his campaign and, potentially, his time in office. “It’s both familiar and uncharted territory, isn’t it?” a production source told Deadline. “That’s part of Spencer and Heidi’s appeal, right?”

Pratt’s team moved fast to shut it down. “This is inaccurate,” a spokesperson told TheWrap. “There is no series in production and cameras have not been following the campaign. He does not have any signed contract. No contract exists related to this because it isn’t true.” A rep also told Us Weekly he has “no plans to do so” going forward.

Boardwalk Pictures did not respond to requests for comment. Separately, the couple had been in talks with Hulu about a show documenting their life after the fires, but that project has not been greenlit.

The denial hasn’t stopped the chatter. One insider told Radar Online that regardless of whether cameras are officially rolling, “Spencer may have denied he is shooting this campaign for a reality show, but it is still a reality show-style circus of a campaign. He has spent years watching how celebrity culture and politics have merged together, and he genuinely believes the old rules no longer apply.”

Hotel Bel-Air, Airstreams, and Where He Actually Lives

Another controversy hit when TMZ reported that Pratt had been staying at the Hotel Bel-Air — where rooms start at $1,500 a night — rather than the Airstream trailer parked on the lot of his burned-down Pacific Palisades home, which featured prominently in his campaign ads. The clip, in which he stands in front of the trailer saying “This is where I live,” has drawn over 13.8 million views.

Pratt’s response on X was pointed: “Hey guys, why don’t they wanna talk about why I need a hotel in the first place? Karen Bass let my home burn down. Also 6,000 of my neighbors. NBD.”

On TMZ Live, he elaborated. “I don’t live at the Hotel Bel-Air. I don’t live in the Airstream. I don’t live in Santa Barbara. I don’t have a house. They burned it down.” He said the Airstream had become unsafe for security reasons — citing “vantage points for a would-be sniper” — and that the Hotel Bel-Air was simply the safest option available. His wife Heidi and their sons Gunner, 8, and Ryker, 3, have been staying in Carpinteria, California.

“That is where I live, period,” he said of the Palisades property. “I don’t need to sleep there every night. I don’t need to go number two on that toilet. That is where I live.”

The Obama Comparison and The View’s Reaction

If there’s one moment that crystallized the absurdity of this whole situation, it might be Pratt’s recent interview with NBC Los Angeles, in which he compared his experience to Barack Obama’s pre-political career. “I have two awards from my community,” he told anchor Conan Nolan. “President Obama actually didn’t even have awards when he was a community organizer. He was able to become a senator and then a president for eight years. So, I feel like him, and I have the same experience.”

The View addressed it Wednesday. Joy Behar’s response was immediate: “What? Snapchatter of the Year is not the same thing as head of the Law Review at Harvard?” Sunny Hostin pointed out that Obama graduated from Harvard Law School and served in the U.S. Senate before the White House. Behar also noted that Bass holds a JFK Profiles in Courage Award, while Pratt’s standout credential is winning Snapchatter of the Year at the 2018 Shorty Awards.

To be fair, Sara Haines and Alyssa Farah Griffin both pushed back slightly, arguing that Ivy League credentials don’t automatically translate to effective governance — but the audience was mostly laughing.

Not everyone in Pratt’s orbit is cheering him on, either. His sister Stephanie Pratt wrote on X in February: “Spencer has done great work for the Palisades. But LA does not need another unqualified and inexperienced mayor. A vote for him is a vote for stupidity.”

Pratt, for his part, has leaned into the outsider framing. “I’m no longer a reality star,” he’s insisted. “I’m the only candidate living in reality, too.” His campaign has run AI-generated videos depicting him as a Batman-style vigilante fighting a dystopian Los Angeles, with Bass cast as the Joker. He’s also posted a clip using Khloé Kardashian screaming “liar” from an old episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, spliced over footage of Bass from the recent debate.

The June 2 primary is now just days away. If no candidate clears 50%, the top two vote-getters advance to a November runoff — which, given the current numbers, looks increasingly likely. Whether Pratt makes it to that stage, or whether Bass pulls away as undecided voters make their final calls, the race has already done something remarkable: it’s made people outside of Los Angeles pay attention to a city council election.

“Funny how they never attack my policy ideas,” Pratt posted on X this week. “They can only try to assassinate your character. I’m in the arena, son.”

The post Spencer Pratt’s Mayor Run: Chelsea Fight, Poll Surge & More appeared first on Cream.

• Netflix’s Roast of Kevin Hart streamed live on May 10 from the Kia Forum in Los Angeles
• Chelsea Handler went after MAGA comedian Tony Hinchcliffe and host Shane Gillis in standout exchanges
• Handler slammed comedians who performed at the Riyadh Comedy Festival, calling out Pete Davidson and Jeff Ross by name
• The Rock, Tom Brady, Draymond Green, Regina Hall, and Pete Davidson all appeared at the nearly three-hour event
• Hinchcliffe fired back at Handler during his set, calling her a “cold frigid b—h”

Chelsea Handler showed up to Netflix’s Roast of Kevin Hart on Sunday night with a list — and nobody on it was safe.

The nearly three-hour live event, held at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles and hosted by Shane Gillis, featured roasters including Handler, Pete Davidson, Jeff Ross, Tony Hinchcliffe, Draymond Green, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Kevin Hart, 46, sat and took it all. But the moments that are going to be talked about the longest weren’t really about Hart at all.

Handler vs. Hinchcliffe — and the Riyadh Callout

Handler, 51, opened her set by going straight at the comedians in the room who performed at the Riyadh Comedy Festival — an event widely criticized over Saudi Arabia’s human rights record. Human Rights Watch released a formal statement condemning the comedians’ participation, citing the country’s record of censorship and ongoing abuses.

“Now that your favorite leader is making the draft mandatory,” Handler said, “I assume that all of you will be signing up to go fight the war in Iran. Or do you tough-talking p—ies only go to the Middle East for comedy festivals?”

Davidson, Ross, and Hart himself were among the prominent U.S. comedians who performed at Riyadh in 2025 — all of them sitting in the room as she said it.

Then she turned her attention to Tony Hinchcliffe.

“Tony is what happens when women don’t have safe access to abortion care,” she said, raising an eyebrow. She followed it up: “Tony, quick question: if you’re here tonight, who’s keeping Joe Rogan’s balls warm in their mouth?”

Rogan, 58, and Hinchcliffe have been close for years — Hinchcliffe co-hosts the Kill Tony podcast alongside Brian Redban, and the two have appeared on each other’s shows repeatedly. Handler’s shot landed hard.

Hinchcliffe fired back during his own portion of the night, calling Handler a “cold frigid b—h.” He also noted that he had turned down a $1 million offer to perform at the Riyadh festival himself.

Hinchcliffe is no stranger to this kind of heat. He became a political flashpoint after his appearance at Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, where he called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” and made a sexual slur against Latino immigrants. The backlash came from both sides — Trump himself said he had “no idea” who Hinchcliffe was. Despite all of it, Hinchcliffe landed a Netflix deal in the months that followed.

In May 2025, he explained his reasoning for taking the rally gig to Bill Maher: “When I was going in to do that rally, the goal, it wasn’t just to swing a few thousand votes hopefully… It was also to f—ing have the president go, ‘That was cool. Thanks, man.'”

Handler and Gillis Go at It

The other exchange that’s going to follow this roast around for a while happened between Handler and host Shane Gillis — and it got personal fast.

Gillis introduced Handler with a volley of provocative lines. “Chelsea is a Zionist. Not saying that’s a good or bad thing. Speaking of dead kids, she’s a big fan of abortions. Chelsea’s been scraped more times than the grill at Benihana,” he told the audience.

He then escalated: “Speaking of tossing tiny shrimp into a child’s mouth, Chelsea Handler went to dinner at Jeffrey Epstein’s house in 2010. Look it up, there’s articles. It wasn’t like a big party, there were like seven people there. It was like Prince Andrew and Woody Allen were there.”

Handler, who is Jewish, didn’t flinch. She came back swinging at Gillis’s own history: “Shane, just so you know, Judaism and Zionism are two different things. Just like how Chinatown and Koreatown are two different things, but your favorite slur works in both places.”

The reference was pointed. Gillis was fired by NBC less than a week after being announced as an SNL cast member in 2019, after old podcast clips surfaced of him using anti-Asian slurs. He’s since hosted SNL twice, returning in 2024 and again after that — but Handler made sure the room remembered.

The Rest of the Roast

In between the political fireworks, Hart took his lumps from everyone on that stage.

Jeff Ross, the self-styled “Roastmaster General,” walked out dressed in Eddie Murphy’s iconic red leather suit from Delirious and wasted no time: “Tonight, I’m dressed like your idol, Eddie Murphy. Because he’s not coming. Your idol doesn’t give a [damn] about you.” He also shared something genuinely moving — Hart’s joke at the Tom Brady roast two years ago, where he said Ross looked “sicker and sicker,” actually pushed Ross to get his first colonoscopy. Doctors found a Stage 3 tumor in his colon. “So thank you, little buddy, for saving my life,” Ross said.

Handler took credit for Hart’s entire career. “I was one of the first people to give Kevin a platform for his comedy with a weekly spot on ‘Chelsea Lately,'” she said. “I had no idea we would be subjected to three ‘Jumanji’ movies and two ‘Ride Along’ movies. I’m here to apologize.”

Pete Davidson compared Hart to Draymond Green’s Funko Pop. Regina Hall claimed Hart’s late mother, Nancy Hart, still communicates with her from beyond — and delivered messages from her to everyone on the stage, ending with: “She said, ‘I love you, Kevin Hart. Have fun on your big night. And now I have to get back to Michael Clarke Duncan.'”

Tom Brady made a surprise cameo — two years after Hart torched him at his own Netflix roast — then wisely left before things got truly unhinged.

And then The Rock showed up, introduced by Venus and Serena Williams. “The ‘Franchise Viagra’ is in the house,” Johnson announced. “Now this roast can go hard all night long.” He told Hart he loved him so much he’d gotten a tattoo of him on his crotch. “It’s life-sized too,” he added — and offered to show it to Hart’s wife Eniko, who was sitting in the audience. “I’m kidding. She’s already seen it.”

Hart sat through nearly three hours of it. The man earned whatever Netflix is paying him.

The post Chelsea Handler Roasts MAGA, Shane Gillis at Kevin Hart Netflix Special appeared first on Cream.