The Real World (retrospectively referred to as The Real World: New York, to distinguish it from subsequent installments of the series) is the first season of MTV's reality television series The Real World, which focuses on a group of diverse strangers living together for several months as cameras follow their lives and interpersonal relationships. It was created by producers Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray.
The cast consisted of seven people, ranging in age from 19 to 26, most of whom were already living in New York City when the series taped.Blake, Meredith (June 6, 2011). "This is the True Story...". The A.V. Club. The cast was filmed living in a SoHo loft from February 16 to May 18, 1992,The Real World Diaries. Pocket Books. 1996. p. 210."SoHo Loft". realworldhouses.com. November 28, 2010 and the series premiered May 21 that year. The series consisted of 13 episodes.The Real World: New York: Full Episode Synopses and Recaps. MTV. Retrieved November 29, 2011. This is the first of three seasons to be filmed in New York City. In 2001, the show returned to the city in its tenth season, and again in 2008 for its 21st season,Sicha, Choire (May 13, 2008). "The Real World: Brooklyn. For Real." The New York Observer. set in the borough of Brooklyn. In 2021, the original cast reunited for The Real World Homecoming: New York.
As the first season of one of the first series in what is now considered the reality television genre, The Real World: New York is sometimes credited with pioneering some of the conventions of the genre, including bringing together a group of participants who had not previously met, and the use of "confessional" interviews with participants to double as the show's narration (though in the first season, the confessional interviews were sparse and were not taped in a separate, private room, as would become common later). Some, however, have credited an earlier series, the 1991 Dutch TV show Nummer 28, for these innovations.
Production history
The Real World was originally inspired by the popularity of youth-oriented shows of the 1990s like Beverly Hills, 90210. 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. 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.Van den Boogaard, Raymond (September 28, 1996 ). "Zeven werklozen samen op zoek naar een baan". (Dutch). 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 cast seven cast members from 500 applicants, paying them $2,600 for their time on the show.
The production discovered a nine-story, ten-unit residential co-op building at 565 Broadway, at the corner of Prince Street, in Manhattan's SoHo district, after much searching, and converted the massive, 4000-square-foot duplex to be the residence and filming location. Walls separating two adjacent apartments on the second and third floors were removed in order to form a single , four bedroom residence, and were renovated for the filming of the series. Production personnel, which included up to 13 people at one time, utilized a work space with a separate entrance.The door number is also shown in various scenes, such as Act 2 of Episode 5 and Act 1 of Episode 9. The cast lived in the loft from February 16 to May 18, 1992. The series premiered three days later, on May 21, 1992.
Critical reception 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."
Nonetheless, the series was a hit with viewers, and the initial seasons have come to be reassessed. Writing in 2011, Meredith Blake of The A.V. Club found the cast to be "ambitious, articulate, and thoughtful". Though she conceded that nearly all of the cast were pursuing careers as performers, and thus had ulterior motives for appearing on the show, she found their motivations "relatively noble" compared to that of later participants in reality TV shows, many of whom wanted simply to become famous by appearing on TV. She wrote that later seasons of The Real World had become "too much to bear" after "cast members figured out that the best way to get screen time was to act out - not to sit around having freshman dorm-room-style conversations about race relations." She wrote that, by contrast to more recent examples of reality TV, "The Real World: New York now seems incredibly, achingly earnest, bracingly raw, and sweetly idealistic."
Cast