Tuesday night was the season premiere of \The Real World: Philadelphia."" The Daily Cardinal's Amanda Becker watched the premiere with UW-Madison senior Landon, [MTV does not want his last name to be used] who is in this season's cast. Before the show aired, Becker interviewed him about his experiences on ""The Real World"" and found out how seven strangers stopped being polite and started being real.
Landon, what was your casting call experience?
I was just waiting in between classes one day and my ex-girlfriend called me up and said, ""Hey, why don't you go to 'The Real World' casting call because all your friends think you should do it, and here's your chance. And I was like, I'm 23 years old, and this is probably the last chance I'll ever get to be a kid, and be on MTV ... so I just stood in line like everyone else.
How long after the casting call did you find out you were on the show? What were the steps?
My interview was [in] late September, early October. I didn't receive the actual call until the end of February or early March. ... Basically we had 700 kids that went into State Street Brats that day, and we had groups of 12, and two people were pulled out of each group. Then I was asked to fill out a bunch of paper forms, and later that night at around 11:30 I got a call, and MTV asked me to do a taped interview, and I said, sure, what the heck. I went to L.A. for the interview, and then I sent them my own video. After they looked at that, I got a call back to come to Chicago and do another taped interview. There was then one more interview in L.A. and then I waited a long time, until I finally got the call!
How did you deal with all the cameras?
Well, when we were out, there was usually a camera crew of five or six people that were around us, but if we were just at the house there was always one cameraman and a light man around. Also, in the house there were about 30 or more hidden cameras everywhere. After a while you just got used to it, you just had to get over not being yourself. One of the main things I went through, was getting tired of not being myself, but after a while, it's like you can't stand it, you have to be yourself. It's just that sort of thing that you have to get by.
Did people in Philadelphia treat the cast differently in any ways?
Oh yeah, people would scream at us to get a real job, our front door was egged, we had a grocery cart rolled up against our house, we even had a couple of people break in. You just learn to deal with it and say, ""Oh someone egged our front door, let's go clean it."" Towards the end nothing even gets to you, if anything happens you just brush it off and keep going.
If you could pick one thing that you took from this experience what would it be?
I think I gained a lot of self-confidence in myself. It's a lot of being from the Midwest and coming from a small town, you don't really boast about anything. People tend to make assumptions about you. If you don't explain what you just did, people assume things. What I mostly got out of that was that I feel like I'm a good person, and my roommates never knew me before and they feel like I'm a good person too. So mostly I gained self-confidence, so yeah ... confidence.
