The Real World (TV series)

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The Real World was inspired by the 1973 PBS documentary series An American Family.[10] It focuses on the lives of a group of strangers[11] who audition to live together in a house for several months, as cameras record their interpersonal relationships. The show moves to a different city each season. The footage shot during the housemates’ time together was edited into 22-minute episodes for the first 19 seasons, and into 44-minute episodes beginning with The Real World: Hollywood, the series' twentieth season, before shortening to a 30-minute length for its thirty-third season. The narration given over the opening title sequence used during the first 28 seasons by the seven housemates states some variation of the following:

This is the true story…of seven strangers…picked to live in a house…(work together) and have their lives taped…to find out what happens…when people stop being polite…and start getting real…The Real World.

The Real World was originally inspired by the popularity of youth-oriented shows of the 1990s like Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place. Bunim and Murray initially considered developing a scripted series in a similar vein, but quickly decided that the cost of paying writers, actors, costume designers, and make-up artists was too high.[12] Bunim and Murray decided against this idea, and at the last minute, pulled the concept (and the cast) before it became the first season of the show. Tracy Grandstaff, one of the original seven picked for what has come to be known as "Season 0", went on to minor fame as the voice of the animated Beavis and Butt-Head character Daria Morgendorffer, who eventually got her own spinoff, Daria. Dutch TV producer Erik Latour claims that the ideas for The Real World were directly derived from his television show Nummer 28, which aired in 1991 on Dutch television.[13] Bunim/Murray decided upon the cheaper idea of casting a bunch of "regular people" to live in an apartment and taping their day-to-day lives, believing seven diverse people would have enough of a basis upon which to interact without scripts. The production converted a massive, 4000-square-foot duplex in Soho, cast seven cast members from 500 applicants, and paid them $2,600 for their time on the show. The cast lived in the loft from February 16 to May 18, 1992. The series premiered three days later, on May 21, 1992.[12]

At the time of its initial airing, reviews of the show were mostly negative. Matt Roush, writing in USA Today, characterized the show as "painfully bogus," and a cynical and exploitative new low in television, commenting, "Watching The Real World, which fails as documentary (too phony) and as entertainment (too dull), it's hard to tell who's using who more." The Washington Post's Tom Shales commented, "Ah to be young, cute, and stupid, and to have too much free time...Such is the lot facing the wayward wastrels of The Real World, something new in excruciating torture from the busy minds at MTV." Shales also remarked upon the cast members’ creative career choices, saying, "You might want to think about getting a real job."[12]

Nonetheless, the series was a hit with viewers. One early sign of the show's popularity occurred on the October 2, 1993 episode of the sketch comedy show, Saturday Night Live, which parodied the second-season Los Angeles cast's recurring arguments over cliquism, prejudice and political differences.[14][15]

The show also gained widespread attention with its third season, The Real World: San Francisco, which aired in 1994, and depicted the conflict between David "Puck" Rainey, a bicycle messenger criticized for his poor personal hygiene,[16][17][18] and his roommates, most notably AIDS activist Pedro Zamora.[19] As the show increased in popularity, Zamora's life as someone living with AIDS gained considerable notice, garnering widespread media attention. Zamora was one of the first openly gay men with AIDS to be portrayed in popular media,[20] and after his death on November 11, 1994 (mere hours after the final episode of his season aired), he was lauded by then-President Bill Clinton. Zamora's friend and roommate during the show, Judd Winick, went on to become a successful comic book writer, and wrote the Eisner Award-nominated graphic novel Pedro and Me, about his friendship with Zamora, as well as high-profile[21] and controversial[22] storylines in mainstream superhero comics that featured gay and AIDS-related themes. Zamora's conflicts with Rainey were not only considered emotional high points for that season,[18] but are credited with making The Real World a hit show, and with proving that the infant "reality" television format was one that could bring considerable ratings to a network.[23] By July 1995, the series surpassed Beavis and Butt-head as the network's top-rated show during the fourth season, The Real World: London.[18]

Appearing on the program has often served as a springboard to further success, especially in the entertainment industry.[24]

Eric Nies of the New York cast went on to become a model, actor, and television host. His housemate, Kevin Powell, became a successful author, poet,[25] journalist,[10] and politician.[26][27] Their housemate Heather B. Gardner went on to become a hip-hop music artist under the professional name Heather B.[28][29]

Los Angeles cast member Beth Stolarczyk has produced men's and women's calendars and television programs featuring reality TV personalities, including herself and other Real World alumni, including Tami Roman (who became a cast member on Basketball Wives and spinoff Basketball Wives LA), 2002–2003 Las Vegas' Trishelle Cannatella, 2002 Chicago's Tonya Cooley and Back to New York's Coral Smith. Stolarczyk, Cannatella, and Miami's Flora Alekseyeun appeared in the May 2002 Playboy magazine,[30][31][32] with later issues spotlighting Cannatella's 2002–2003 Las Vegas housemate, Arissa Hill.[33] Cooley appeared on playboy.com. In addition to Playboy magazine, Cannatella has also posed for the online Playboy Cyber Club,[32] as well as for Stuff magazine.[34]

San Francisco alum Judd Winick is a noted comic book writer and artist, with the majority of his work appearing in comic books published by DC Comics, including writing such well known characters as Batman, Green Arrow, and Green Lantern. Winick also published Pedro and Me, a graphic novel about his friendship with fellow castmate Pedro Zamora, who died of AIDS related complications not long after his experience on the show.

London cast member Jacinda Barrett's acting career includes films such as Ladder 49, The Namesake, The Human Stain, and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.

Boston cast member Sean Duffy was elected to the United States House of Representatives for Wisconsin's 7th congressional district in 2010 as a member of the Republican Party. He is married to San Francisco alum Rachel Campos-Duffy, a conservative TV news personality.

Lindsay Brien of the Seattle cast became a radio and CNN personality.[35]

Hawaii cast member Tecumseh "Teck" Holmes III appeared in films such as National Lampoon's Van Wilder and in TV series such as Friends.[36][37]

Mike Mizanin has also found fame as a WWE wrestler wrestling under the name "The Miz," a character he debuted during the Back to New York season. His successes have included the WWE World Heavyweight Championship.[38]

2002 Chicago cast member Kyle Brandt’s acting career includes starring in the soap opera Days of Our Lives.[39][40] His castmate Tonya Cooley also appeared on an MTV special of True Life: I'm a Reality TV Star.[41]

2002–2003 Las Vegas cast members Trishelle Cannatella and Steven Hill appeared in the horror film Scorned. Cannatella has also appeared on other reality shows, such as The Surreal Life, Battle of the Network Reality Stars, and Kill Reality, the latter of which also featured Hill and Cooley.

Paris castmate Mallory Snyder went on to become a model, most notably appearing in Sports Illustrated magazine's annual swimsuit issue in 2005 and 2006.

2004 San Diego castmate Jamie Chung has appeared in various television and film roles, including Dragonball Evolution, Sorority Row, The Hangover Part II and Once Upon a Time.[42] Cameran Eubanks, also from the 2004 San Diego cast, has been a main character on Bravo's hit reality series Southern Charm since its 1st season in March 2014. Philadelphia cast member Karamo Brown appeared as a cast member on the TV One original reality series The Next :15 and is the host on Are You the One? Second Chances. He is also the Culture guide on Netflix's Queer Eye reboot.

Washington, D.C. cast member Emily Schromm was voted as the winner of Women's Health's America's Next Fitness Star in August 2014, and will be featured in a series of fitness DVDs.[43][44]

Portland cast member Jordan Wiseley appeared on the OWN Network original series, Tyler Perry's If Loving You Is Wrong.

Dozens of former cast members from The Real World and its sister production Road Rules have appeared on the spin-off series The Challenge, which pays $100,000 or more to its winners. Various cast members have also earned livings as public speakers, since Bunim-Murray Productions funded their training in motivational speaking by the Points of Light Foundation in 2002, allowing them to earn between $1,500 and $2,000 for an appearance on the college lecture circuit.[45]

The residence is typically elaborate in its décor, and for many seasons was furnished by IKEA.[46] The residence usually includes a pool table, a Jacuzzi, and in many seasons an aquarium, which serves as a metaphor for the show, in that the roommates, who are being taped at all times in their home, are seen metaphorically as fish in a fishbowl.[47] This point is punctuated not only by the fact that the MTV logo title card seen after the closing credits of each episode is designed as an aquarium, but also by a poem that Judd Winick wrote during his stay in the 1994 San Francisco house called "Fishbowl".[48] In some seasons, the group is provided with a shared car to use during their stay,[49] or in the case of the St. Thomas season, a chauffeured motorboat to transport cast members from their Hassel Island residence to Charlotte Amalie.[50] There is also a home phone and a computer provided for cast members to have contact with family and friends, as they are not allowed to use their mobile phones during their stay in the house.

Each season consists of seven to eight people (in initial seasons ages 18–26 before changing to 21–26 and currently cast for 21–34), usually selected from thousands of applicants from across the country, with the group chosen typically representing different races, sexes, sexual orientations, levels of sexual experiences, and religious and political beliefs. Should a cast member decide to move out, or be asked to do so by all his or her roommates, the roommates will often get a replacement, dependent on how much filming time is left. Cast members are paid a small stipend for their participation in the show.[45] The cast of the first season, for example, was given $2,500. However, because cast members are not actors playing characters, they do not receive residuals routinely paid to actors whenever a TV show on which they appear is aired and replayed.[10]

Each season begins with the individual members of the house shown leaving home, often for the first time, and/or meeting their fellow housemates while in transit to their new home, or at the house itself. The exception was the Los Angeles season, which premiered with two housemates picking up a third at his Kentucky home and driving in a Winnebago RV to their new home in Los Angeles. The housemates are taped around the clock. The house is outfitted with video cameras mounted on walls to capture more intimate moments, and numerous camera crews consisting of three to six people follow the cast around the house and out in public.[51] In total, approximately 30 cameras are used during production.[52] Each member of the cast is instructed to ignore the cameras and the crew,[51] but are required to wear a battery pack and microphone in order to record their dialogue, though some castmembers have been known to turn off or hide them at times. The only area of the house in which camera access is restricted are the bathrooms.[52]

Despite the initial awkwardness of being surrounded by cameramen, castmembers have stated that they eventually adjust to it, and that their behavior is purely natural, and not influenced by the fact that they are being taped.[53] Winick, an alumnus of the show's third season (San Francisco), adds that castmembers eventually stop thinking about the cameras because it is too exhausting not to, and that the fact that their lives were being documented made it seem "more real."[54][55] Other cast members have related different accounts. Members of the London cast found the cameras burdensome at times, such as Jay Frank and Jacinda Barrett, who felt they intruded on the intimacy of their romantic relationships. Lars Schlichting related an anecdote in which roommate Mike Johnson asked a question when cameras were not present, and then asked the same question five minutes later when cameras were present, which Schlichting adds was not typical of Johnson. Johnson himself has remarked that castmate Barrett "hammed it up a lot," and that roommate Sharon Gitau withheld details of her life out of fear that her grandmother would react negatively. Movement of the roommates outside of the residence is restricted to places that are cleared by producers[56] through contractual arrangements with locations to allow filming.[57]

The producers made an exception to the taping protocol during the third season, when Pedro Zamora requested that he be allowed to go out on a date without the cameras, because the normal anxieties associated with first dates would be exacerbated by the presence of cameras.[58]

Confessional

At the end of each week, each housemate is required to sit down and be interviewed about the past week's events. Unlike the normal day-to-day taping, these interviews, which are referred to as "confessionals," involve the subject looking directly into the camera while providing opinions and reflective accounts of the week's activities, which are used in the final, edited episodes. The producers instruct the cast to talk about whatever they wish,[55][59] and to speak in complete sentences, to reinforce the perception on the part of the home viewer that the cast is speaking to them. Winick described this practice as "like therapy without the help."[55] The confessionals were originally conducted by Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray, but were eventually delegated to production staff members like George Verschoor and Thomas Klein. Beginning with the second season (Los Angeles), a small soundproof room was incorporated into each house for this purpose, which itself has also become known as the Confessional in which cast members could record themselves and provide thoughts about house and life events. (The soundproofing practice appears to have been discontinued in later seasons.[60][61])

The various casts were often creative in their use of the confessional, which Bunim and Murray referred to as "inspired lunacy," such as a group confessional that the Los Angeles cast conducted on their last day in order to appear less contentious, but which ended with them arguing and storming out, an appearance by San Francisco housemate Judd Winick in a nun's habit, and Miami roommates Melissa Padrón and Flora Alekseyeun dressing up as prostitutes for a shared confessional in which they discuss why their roommates did not get along with them.[15] During Mardi Gras, 2000 New Orleans cast member Danny Roberts used the confessional to engage in a sex act.[62] Later seasons has more seating in the Confessional to encourage recordings with multiple people.

Evolution and changes

Initially, the show documented the housemates as they struggled to find and maintain jobs and careers in their new locales, with minimal group activities aside from their day-to-day lives in the house and their socializing in the city. The only group activity engineered by the producers during the first season was a trip for the three women to Jamaica. By the second season, sending the entire cast on a vacation and/or short-term local trip would become the norm for most seasons. By the fifth season, the cast would be given an ongoing, season-long activity, with the Miami cast given startup money and a business advisor to begin their own business. This aspect of the show remained in most subsequent seasons.[63] The assignments are obligatory, with casts assigned to work at an after-school daycare program, a radio station, public-access television station, etc. Beginning with the tenth season, a rule was implemented that required a roommate fired from the group job to be evicted from the house and dropped from the cast. Hollywood's Greg Halstead and Cancun's Joey Rozmus were evicted from their respective houses after they were fired from their group jobs.[64][65] Beginning in the 28th season, certain jobs in the area were approved by production that the cast had the liberty to apply for independently if desired.

Editing

Footage taped throughout each season is edited into episodes (half-hour episodes for the first 19 seasons, one-hour episodes beginning with the twentieth).[66]

Physical violence of any kind is typically not tolerated by the producers. After an incident occurs, producers or cast members are typically given the choice as to whether a violent housemate can stay due to a contract clause that prohibits violence. After an incident during the Seattle season in which Stephen Williams slapped Irene McGee as she moved out,[67] a response to the event was debated by the housemates, who were not present but were shown a videotape of the incident. The producers, not wanting to be seen condoning violence, gave the housemates the choice of having him leave, but instead the housemates chose to let him stay, and Williams was ordered to attend an anger management class.[68] During the 2002–2003 Las Vegas season, Brynn Smith and Steven Hill got into an altercation in which Smith threw a fork at Hill. Hill contacted the producers who notified him that it was up to the cast to decide on Smith's fate. The cast let Hill make the ultimate decision, and he chose that Smith could stay.[69] During the Sydney season, Trisha Cummings shoved Parisa Montazaran to the ground during a heated altercation. Producers gave Montazaran the choice as to whether Cummings could stay or leave, and she chose that Cummings had to leave.[70] Denver housemates Tyrie Ballard and Davis Mallory got into an explosive altercation that required production to intervene on-screen and separate the two before any violence occurred.[71] Similarly, Hollywood castmates William Gilbert and Dave Malinosky got into an explosive altercation with fellow housemate Greg Halstead that also required intervention from production, as well as Gilbert and Malinosky to undergo anger management.[72] During the Portland season, Nia Moore physically attacked Johnny Reilly in retaliation for Reilly purposely throwing a drink on her during a heated altercation, and later got into a physical altercation with Averey Tressler, when Tressler defended Reilly from an attempt by Moore to attack Reilly again with a hair dryer. Moore also took exception to coming into contact with the fecal matter of Tressler's pet dog Daisy. Unlike prior seasons where the one assaulted housemate was given the sole choice as to whether the attacker could stay, the Portland cast had its producers decide that only those not involved in the confrontation could decide whether Moore could stay via a majority vote. They chose to let her stay, and producers did not order Moore to anger management, despite subsequent threats to attack other cast members. As a result, Reilly and Tressler chose to leave the loft during that season's final episode, along with Tressler's dog Daisy.[73][74] In the final three episodes of the Go Big or Go Home season, castmates Jenna Thomason and Ceejai Jenkins got into two physical altercations while in the house. During the second altercation, Jenkins gave Thomason a black eye and bruises. As a result, both were removed by production due to the altercation.[75]

Cast members are also subject to random drug tests, and a cast member failing a drug test will lead to him or her being evicted from the house. This was the case with Brandon Kane of the St. Thomas season, who was removed from the house in that season's eleventh episode after testing positive for cocaine usage.[76]

Cast members are held responsible for any damage to property that occurred within the house. For example, Brooklyn's J.D. Ordoñez was required to pay $350 after destroying a coffee table in one episode,[77][78] and 2011 Las Vegas' Adam Royer was held responsible for the $3,105 worth of damage that his drunken and disorderly behavior caused to the suite that housed that season's cast.[79]

Note: Seasons 20–32 aired one-hour episodes, while seasons 1–19 and 33 aired 30-minute episodes.

In 2002, MTV also produced a made-for-TV movie, The Real World Movie: The Lost Season, ostensibly about a season of The Real World whose cast members are terrorized by a rejected would-be member.

In 2008, prior to the airing of the Hollywood season, the first-ever Real World Awards Bash aired on MTV. Viewers voted the Austin season as their favorite season.[245]

Since the introduction of The Real World, Bunim/Murray has introduced a number of other reality shows, most notably Road Rules, in which five strangers (six in later seasons) are sent off in a Winnebago RV and asked to travel to various locales and complete certain tasks to eventually gain a "handsome reward." Other Bunim/Murray productions include The Challenge, which pits teams of alumni from both shows against each other in physical competitions.

Bunim-Murray also produced Pedro, a 2008 film by director Nick Oceano, which dramatized the life of Pedro Zamora, including his stay in the Real World house. The film, Bunim/Murray's first scripted project since the original unaired "Real World" concept, was an Official Selection at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival.[246][247]

Two international localized editions were produced in the 1990s, The Real World: Stockholm and The Real World: Visby.

• The show was satirized in the October 2, 1993 episode of the sketch comedy show, Saturday Night Live. The episode, which was hosted by Shannen Doherty, featured a sketch depicting a Real World cast patterned after the Los Angeles cast, and poked fun at the discussions of racism, bigotry, and political differences that served as a recurring theme that season.[14][54] Another SNL parody of The Real World came in a 1996 episode hosted by John Goodman in which Bob Dole (Norm Macdonald) is thrown out of the house.
• The 1994 movie Reality Bites, starring Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke, focuses on a group of twentysomethings whose video diaries are misappropriated for a Real World-style documentary series. This fictional documentary series, as well as the title of the movie itself, closely parodies and satirizes The Real World format.
• A fifth-season episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 called "Unreal World" depicted David Silver using a character named Tuck as the subject of a class video project. When Tuck refuses to participate, the rest of the cast pretend to be Tuck and his roommates for the project. Another character named Beth is also used in the project.
• In an episode of the animated comedy Pinky and the Brain, Pinky and the Brain join the cast of a show called Real Life hosted by TV personality Eisenhower for the network MTTV in order to broadcast the a cappella voice of Rush Limbaugh in order to take over the world.
• A satirical TV movie called The Lost Season parodied The Real World. It depicted a season of the show that supposedly took place in Vancouver, British Columbia, and was abandoned because its participants were kidnapped.
• The reality show The Surreal Life is structured similarly to The Real World, except that the housemates, who live together for ten days, are celebrities. The show's original name was "The Surreal World."
• "Swept Away – A Very Special Episode", a Season 11 episode of the crime drama Law & Order that premiered February 28, 2001, featured a plot involving the investigation into the murder of a housemate on a reality show akin to The Real World called Deal With It. An episode of the crime drama Diagnosis Murder also featured a plot involving a murder committed during the filming such a show.
• Dave Chappelle lampooned what he perceived as the targeting of minority cast members for criticism or ejection on the show on his Comedy Central sketch comedy show, Chappelle's Show, with a sketch entitled "The Mad Real World", portraying, with hyperbole, the results of what would happen if one white person were to cohabitate with a collection of crazy black people.
• The Comedy Central series Drawn Together is an animated reality show parody that borrows much of its format and conventions from The Real World, but whose cast is populated by animated cartoon archetypes.
• The music video for the Eminem track, "Without Me", contains scenes which parody The Real World, with appearances by New Orleans castmate Julie Stoffer, Boston castmate Syrus Yarbrough, and San Francisco castmate David "Puck" Rainey.
• The 1999 romantic comedy She's All That features Matthew Lillard playing Brock Hudson, an ex-Real World cast member kicked out of the house for being obnoxious to his fellow castmates.
• In "Text, Lies & Videotape", a fifth-season episode of the television series Dawson's Creek, Audrey (Busy Philipps) is speaking with Joey (Katie Holmes) about recording her audition tape for the fictional The Real World: Ibiza season. In a sixth-season episode, "The Importance of Not Being Too Earnest", some college students speculate whether Joey sent an e-mail to the whole campus (by accident) in an attempt to get attention or because she was on The Real World.
• In "The Route of All Evil", a third-season episode of the animated television series Futurama, the characters watch an episode of The Real World: The Sun. An incredulous Leela remarks on how much a house on the Sun would cost, a reference to the upscale houses in which that the casts on The Real World live.
• The WB television series Mission Hill based an entire episode on The Real World, in which the show's protagonist joins the cast and attempts to destroy The Real World from the inside by exposing it as an elaborate hoax with microphones and hidden cameras telling each person how to act and behave on camera.
• The TV show Muppets Tonight featured a skit called The Real World: Muppets. Most segments of it were only shown in United Kingdom. It showed Rizzo the Rat, Bobo the Bear, Clifford, Bill the Bubble Guy, and a goth girl named Darci.
• In "Morality Bites," a second-season episode of the television series Charmed, the sisters travel to 2009, and on the television can be heard, "Now back to your regularly scheduled programme, MTV's Real World 18: On the Moon!"
• The computer game Afterlife features a Hell punishment called "The Unreal World", which features the description "This is the true story, of 5000 SOULs, picked to live in a house, and have their lives taped, to find out what happens when people stop being polite, and start getting damned."
• In "My Hero", a 2001 episode of the TV series Scrubs, a cutaway gag shows a number of the characters introducing themselves in the style of The Real World's opening sequence.
• In the April 10, 2005 episode of the stop motion animated television series Robot Chicken entitled "The Deep End," Aquaman is one of seven housemates in the fictional parody of The Real World entitled The Real World: Metropolis.
• Dutch TV producer Erik Latour claims that the ideas for The Real World were directly derived from his television show Nummer 28, which aired in 1991 on Dutch television.[13]
• The Nickelodeon children's comedy show All That parodied The Real World in its last season with "The Unreal World", in which nearly all of the housemates were undead beings, such as vampires, zombies, ghosts, and a floating head.
• Video artist Eileen Maxson's short film Tape 5925: Amy Goodrow is set up as an audition tape for The Real World, a familiar component of the series' casting specials and season openers. Maxson portrays the title character, a sensitive and awkward young woman whose main hobby is paper craft, and reveals a surprising sexual encounter between her teenage self and a teacher. The resulting confession lands on the desk of a jaded MTV employee, who fast-forwards through the details of her depressing story. The video was named one of the "sweet 16" experimental film and video works of 2003 by Village Voice media critic Ed Halter.[268]
• In "More Like Stanksgiving", the fourth episode of the third season of the TV series Happy Endings, the characters watch clips from an episode of The Real World: Sacramento, on which they themselves were previously cast members. The fictional season was said to have not aired due to one of the cast members burning down the house.[269]

• Road Rules - A road-trip inspired spin-off, also from Bunim & Murray
• The Challenge - A reality game show spin-off inistally featuring The Real World and Road Rules castamtes, also from Bunim & Murray
• Terrace House - A Japanese show that is similar in premises to The Real World, that airs internationally on Netflix.
• List of programs broadcast by MTV
• List of The Real World cast members
• List of The Real World seasons

Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Real World.

• Official The Real World website
• Official El Mundo Real website
  • The Real World V at the Wayback Machine (archive index)
• Archival official MTV The Real World website
• MTV.ca's official The Real World website
• The Real World at the Internet Movie Database
• The Real World at TV.com