Excerpts from DCBLOG posts during Real World Bad Blood and The Challenge XXX
BY DC CUEVA
■ @DC408Dxtr @ TW / IG / YT
Tonight also saw the season finales of FOX's popular Wednesday night music drama series, Empire and STAR, and both were the subjects of separate ExtraTime stories that appeared during Real World Bad Blood and The Challenge XXX. Enjoy...
FROM THE ISLANDS TO EMPIRE
When this Real World season ends, DCBLOG will shift our focus like a laser beam to new seasons of Are You The One? and The Challenge, and no other blog site is best equipped to bring you it all than this one. In fact, on Thursday after all of what happened - the buzz for AYTO Season 5 began with our new group of singles being revealed to the public for the very first time... we'll be saving those posts and Team 22's first time on DCBLOG for the 'Pulse Extra, which will lead off our season preview when that's posted after the roomies leave Seattle. But for now, to get yourself in the mood for what awaits us on Wednesday, January 11, let's take a moment to look back, as we always do here, on how we got here, and in this case - of why we now cover three shows instead of just two.
It was at this time three years ago that the original Season 1 cast of the ladder were enjoying some rest & relaxation back stateside after returning home from filming that fall in the Hawaiian island of Kauai. They had no idea of the impact that first season of AYTO would have, let alone become etched in recent lore of the Trifecta as an all-time favorite cast. And of course, the twenty castmates that compiled that memorable first alumni class of the romantic social experiment are the reason there are four succeeding seasons of the show, why I have three shows to follow and cover here, and why I give the De-Facto name of my MTV coverage here.
One of the guys who made his way to Hawaii single and with a shot at love was Andre Sinclair, or Dre, for short. He came to us from Atlanta as a former high school athlete who would then become a party guy VIP on the club scene, and came to Hawaii looking for a girl who's kind, understanding and be his equal socially. That season, he got close with Cleveland girl Ashleigh, but were one of the many couples who the house hoped would be one of those ten perfect matches that went into the Truth Booth, and came back not one of them. And as the Originals headed towards their goal, Dre won what was their last getaway challenge and also control of who to put into the Truth Booth, which is normally done by the house. There, he took the house's advice of untying the Scali/Jacy/John love triangle by putting the comedian and the Puerto Rican in the Truth Booth - a No Match, then those three and Ashleigh switched it up, and of course the Season 1 cast won the $1 Million with one try left.
One of the guys who made his way to Hawaii single and with a shot at love was Andre Sinclair, or Dre, for short. He came to us from Atlanta as a former high school athlete who would then become a party guy VIP on the club scene, and came to Hawaii looking for a girl who's kind, understanding and be his equal socially. That season, he got close with Cleveland girl Ashleigh, but were one of the many couples who the house hoped would be one of those ten perfect matches that went into the Truth Booth, and came back not one of them. And as the Originals headed towards their goal, Dre won what was their last getaway challenge and also control of who to put into the Truth Booth, which is normally done by the house. There, he took the house's advice of untying the Scali/Jacy/John love triangle by putting the comedian and the Puerto Rican in the Truth Booth - a No Match, then those three and Ashleigh switched it up, and of course the Season 1 cast won the $1 Million with one try left.
As that season was airing that winter of 2014, those arbiters of public appetite known as TMZ dug up some suspicious info that Dre wasn't exactly a single man. When some special guests came to the islands on Episode 4 for what is now the infamous visits of the exes of the singles that take place each season, one of them was his ex, Tiffany. The gossip site reported that when he sent his audition tape and application, Dre left out something very important: he got secretly married to Tiffany less than a year before going to Hawaii, and that the two had just become new parents. In fact, a photo posted on the site showed the two wearing wedding rings when she gave birth, and sources told TMZ that they were unaware of Dre's marital status prior to going on the show. And just before going on there, he and Tiffany were going through the divorce process -- and of course she gave the girls some info about him during that visit to Hawaii. And host Ryan Devlin brought up the that TMZ item on the reunion, also.
Now, each of the three shows of the MTV Trifecta air (or have aired) on a Wednesday, and so is Catfish and Survivor. But another prominent show that airs on Hump Day is Empire. Since the debut of the hip-hop musical drama in January 2015, it has been the biggest hit for FOX in the network's American Idol afterlife, and has successfully brought the soundtrack of America's youth into the final frontier of primetime network television in the story of the Lyon family, with a former drug dealer turned hip-hop mogul played by Terrence Howard as the keystone. When sees his past comes back to bite him while being CEO of Empire Entertainment, his three sons try to take over the business of the entertainment and music conglomerate, which also includes his ex-wife released from jail after a lengthy sentence.
Although it is based in the Big Apple, the show - produced by Brian Glazer and his Imagine Entertainment team that also produced another hip-hop milestone - Eminem's 8 Mile - is filmed in Chicago. And last week, Dre - who's now pursuing acting post-AYTO - flew to the Windy City to film parts of a guest-starring role he will have sometime later this season. We've included him walking through the tunnel on the show's set in the photo above, and his SnapChat & Instagram stories captured him on set in between takes of a show that's been a smash hit from the start. He got to hang out with the show's stars, including Bryshere Y. Gray, who plays Yazz the Greatest on Empire, and show director (and former music video director) Billie Woodruff. In addition, Dre also took time to see what the buzz is all about in seeing the year's biggest Broadway play and another of the signs that hip-hop has now made it in the mainstream - the musical Hamilton (he added in his IG post, "The Dopiness was real. This play was amazing. The content , the diversity, the way the used urban culture to tell a old story was craziness.").
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| IG @Andre_Sinclair1 |
Although it is based in the Big Apple, the show - produced by Brian Glazer and his Imagine Entertainment team that also produced another hip-hop milestone - Eminem's 8 Mile - is filmed in Chicago. And last week, Dre - who's now pursuing acting post-AYTO - flew to the Windy City to film parts of a guest-starring role he will have sometime later this season. We've included him walking through the tunnel on the show's set in the photo above, and his SnapChat & Instagram stories captured him on set in between takes of a show that's been a smash hit from the start. He got to hang out with the show's stars, including Bryshere Y. Gray, who plays Yazz the Greatest on Empire, and show director (and former music video director) Billie Woodruff. In addition, Dre also took time to see what the buzz is all about in seeing the year's biggest Broadway play and another of the signs that hip-hop has now made it in the mainstream - the musical Hamilton (he added in his IG post, "The Dopiness was real. This play was amazing. The content , the diversity, the way the used urban culture to tell a old story was craziness.").
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REAL WORLD MEETS A STAR
Last year just after Taylor and her AYTO5 cast were revealed to America, we brought you to the set of one of TV's most-popular shows and one that also shares Wednesday with the love fest. There, Season 1 original Andre Sinclair had a chance to be on that pioneering hip-hop series Empire as an extra and walked in the same Chicago studio and New York setting as those who call Empire Entertainment their home.
Channeling the series' massive success, last year FOX doubled down in the musical drama category by debuting the series Star, which focuses on the journey of three very talented young singers from Atlanta as they plot their journey to stardom. Like its cousin (produced and created by Lee Daniels who also created Empire), the show consists of original music and fantasy sequences along with documenting the hard road every young musician endures to topping the charts. Star is currently in its second season on FOX - this season airing right after Empire and as you might guess, it recently crossed over with the Lyon family.
The one & only Queen Latifah is the most-prominent member of the cast, joined by Benjamin Bratt, Quincy Brown and Amiyah Scott - the first transgender to play a major character on a network scripted drama series, following in the footsteps of Orange is the New Black's Laverne Cox. Star has also boasted a stellar cast of recurring and guest stars during its run: Lenny Kravitz, Tyrese, Naomi Campbell, and Darius McCrary -- best known as Eddie Winslow from Family Matters. Also appearing includes Missy Elliott, Big Boi, T.I.'s ex Tiny, Gladys Knight, Monica, Kelly Price and Empire's Jussie Smollett as Jamal Lyon.
For those who watched this week's episode before what went down in New Orleans, you might've spotted someone familiar from the Trifecta. And while we have seen Bruno, Nicole, Sylvia, Tony and brother Shane on The Challenge this year, and the dinner date Madison and Javi Marroquin had before turning to Teen Mom's Briana DeJesus, those Real World Skeletons roommates have all been beaten to the punch in entering primetime network TV by the one whose skeleton came last to Chicago.
Jason Hill came to the Season 30 house from Raleigh, NC who had transitioned from selling cars to becoming a model, and who had been raised by his young mom who gave birth to him when she was 18. In the house, he took a backseat to all of the drama that took place in the house, but it was only later on that he had awoken from that slumber to three big stories: first, he had found out that he was going to be a dad because of a secret baby mama, and he went back home to meet his new son for the first time.
Near the end of their stay in the Windy City, a night of partying and bad behavior that didn't even involve him inadvertently led to a fight between him and Nicole that escalated and nearly took a turn for the worse. And this was before he had to face the final "skeleton" from the pasts of the roommates who traveled there all season: until then, Jason had never known his biological father, and he had to face the music in meeting him for the very first time.
Last week, Jason appeared in a brief cameo spot on Star, for which he tweeted afterwards, "#Star was a great experience. Doing #MTVRealWorld was a cool experience. Witnessing the time and effort it takes to put a scene together for #Star was pretty amazing." Below is that scene.
Being on the set of #Star was a great experience. Doing #MTVRealWorld was a cool experience. Witnessing the time and effort it takes to put a scene together for #Star was pretty amazing. pic.twitter.com/QA5xmPjUgd— Jason Hill (@_Kazuhnova) November 11, 2017
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