USA TODAY International Edition
First ‘ Real World’ cast reunites in loft
“The Real World Homecoming: New York” proves you can go home again, although much has changed over three decades for one of TV’s first reality franchises.
“It was surreal,” says Heather B. Gardner, one of the housemates from the inaugural 1992 season of MTV’s pioneering reality series. Gardner reunited for a week in the same Manhattan loft for the six- episode “Homecoming,” which premiered Thursday on the new Paramount+ subscription streaming service.
“To go back into the same place where we did this thing 29 years ago, you can’t even imagine it. It was just absolutely crazy,” says Gardner, 50, now a Sirius XM radio host.
Executive producer Jonathan Murray, who created the unscripted melodrama with the late Mary- Ellis Bunim, didn’t know what to expect when reconvening the seven housemates – Gardner, Becky Blasband, Andre Comeau, Julie Gentry, Norman Korpi, Eric Nies and Kevin Powell – who were cast for their personalities and differing backgrounds. ( Their ages ranged
from 19 to 26 when the show premiered.)
“What surprised me most was how quickly the same rapport was there. It was like those almost 30 years disappeared the way this group took up life together again,” Murray says. “The essence of who those people were, it’s still there. They’re just a little more experienced.”
That’s for sure. Gardner explains how she and Comeau didn’t share a bedroom, as the self- professed night owls did in 1992 because both have spouses now. ( The housemates were greeted virtually each day by Comeau’s 4- year- old daughter, Sophie.)
“His daughter was literally like our alarm clock. We got to hear her sweet voice and excitement every morning, waking up her dad on Zoom,” Gardner says. “It was awesome. It melted my heart. It was just so great to see this side of him.”
The original series, which aired for 32 seasons on MTV and another on Facebook Watch in 2019, featured frank and sometimes tense conversations on sensitive topics such as race.
And the reunion has its moments, too. “We really enjoyed seeing everybody, and just like the first run of the show, there were some pretty serious conversations. Some heavy topics were covered and not all of it was comfortable,” says Comeau, 50, still a working musician. “Not everything is perfect in real life, and our show is no different.”
Murray says he had been thinking for
a while about reuniting the cast, which hadn’t been on TV as a group since 1993. He says Paramount+ provided an opportunity because of the high- profile launch and the likelihood its target audience included many who remember the series’ history.
The homecoming got “super- lucky” in securing the original loft, Murray says, but super- unlucky in having to tape the gathering in January during the COVID- 19 pandemic.
For the housemates, that meant quarantining in a hotel before entering the loft. They chatted via group text, which didn’t exist when their younger selves could be seen on the loft phone.
For all the differences, one event they texted about during quarantine, the riot at the U. S. Capitol on Jan. 6, took them back to 1992, when the acquittal of police officers after the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles.
“The most uncomfortable moment in the ( original) show was the Rodney King moment. We were living in that loft and the verdict ( came in) and L. A. was literally on fire,” Gardner says. “And if you fast- forward 29 years later, imagine we come back and we’re hanging out as friends and catching up in our adult lives and there’s an insurrection. These conversations can’t help but come up again. It’s like, wow, how much has really changed?”
Murray has a special affinity for the beginning of “The Real World.”
“I love that New York season because there were no rules about how you tell a story. We didn’t even have the term reality television,” he says. “‘ The Real World’ was one of the early shows that identified that people’s lives are entertaining, that reality can be more interesting than fiction.”
Comeau is “thrilled” to have been part of that inaugural season. “I probably wouldn’t have been part of what reality TV has become. We were aspiring artists ( who) had creative endeavors and I don’t know that they’re looking for that so much now. They’re looking for sparks. They’re looking for lurid sex. Maybe they wanted some of that with us. They certainly didn’t get it, but what they got was something special.”