In what may be the single strangest part of socially detached accommodation we’ve seen in all this year-and-and-God-still-counting crisis, TVLine notes that Real world housemate Eric Nies did not live at the concert house during the recent filming of the next meeting season, The real world: Homecoming New York. Instead of serving as a loftmate, Nies was instead a screenmate, having been transmitted by a video monitor to the loft where the other cast members of the show – drawn from that famous first season, at least in part as an effort to get everyone to care about Paramount Plus, please-I was living. Given that the whole point of The real world, depending on who you ask, it’s to see how rude human beings can be with each other during a prolonged period of forced roomate-dom, this kind of seems contrary to the show’s ostentatious purpose, but Nies says it wasn’t his decision , noting that the setting “was not my choice, but I accepted the result”.
Nies promised that the explanations would come, but the immediate assumption probably has something to do with COVID’s quarantine requirements, since it would be a terrible appearance for MTV to shove 7 people into a house and see what happens when they stop being educated and start getting really infectious. The other six participants in the program – Becky Blasband, Andre Comeau, Heather B. Gardner, Julie Gentry, Norman Korpi and Kevin Powell – all met formally, however, living together in the SoHo loft, where the groundbreaking reality show was filmed for the first time 29 years ago.
The real world: Homecoming New York is scheduled to go live tomorrow, March 4, along with the launch of Paramount Plus.