Life After Laguna Beach

You've obviously carved yourself out a career after Laguna. What's your advice to people who want to have a career after a reality show? Was it hard for you to adjust from there to where you are now?
It'll always be hard, and it's still hard. It's a fun challenge. You know, I'm auditioning a lot out in L.A., and when you go in the room, it's like you're starting out in the hole, coming from a reality show. People's intentions coming from a reality show are different things, and they're not usually the right ones. And you see that. But you can really see the difference between someone who's doing what they've always wanted to do, and someone who all of a sudden got this show thrown on them and decided, "Oh, I guess maybe I'll try to act and do this, even though my plans were to do something totally different. But because the show I was on got me a lot of attention, maybe I'll try to do something here and there..."

Did you have any idea that Laguna would become so popular?
I had no idea how it was going to work out. When we were doing the first season, we didn't know how it was all going to play out. So I just tried to be myself, and to just kind of rolled with it. And then after awhile, we started seeing what [the producers] wanted, and how they wanted the show to run. And it started becoming work to me. It was kind of like, every time we would shoot, it was just getting the goods they needed. We always knew what we had to get. So I'd always go in there like it was work, and give them what they wanted, so I could get out of there.