Eyewitness News spoke exclusively to Nick Prugo, one of the people at the heart of the real-life story, in his first post-jail on-camera interview.
Prugo arrived at the ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood to see himself portrayed on the big screen. "Bling Ring" tells the story of a group of friends from the San Fernando Valley whose celebrity obsession turns criminal.
"I didn't really understand, you know, what was real and what wasn't at that time just because I was so consumed with reality television," said Prugo.
They stole from the homes of stars like Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Audrina Patridge, Orlando Bloom, and Megan Fox.
"I was very nervous, very scared but the girls seemed to calm me down a lot. And then it just seemed to flow and it seemed very natural after a couple of burglaries. And it just didn't seem like what we were doing was so bad," said Prugo.
Prosecutors disagreed. Prugo was convicted and served a year behind bars.
"I needed to have that jail experience," Prugo said. "I needed to figure out my boundaries."
Prugo said the biggest lesson others can learn from his story: Reality TV "is not all that it's cracked up to be."
Still, his fellow defendant starred in a reality show after serving time, and now Prugo is working on his own reality show.
"You're probably going to see a show on the air within the next year," said Prugo. "At the end of the day, I have two strikes. I'm not so much trying to cash in as, I mean, there's not a lot of fields left open to me as what I can do, and this show does have a redemption quality to it."
As for the new movie, we spoke with Prugo moments after he watched it for the first time.
"It was heavy. It's a heavy thing because it's obviously something that really happened to me. It's just really intense," he said.
