DC ExtraTime: Real World/The Challenge Meets The Rookie

BY DC CUEVA                      

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB

On last summer's third installment of Ex On The Beach, for us MTV fans most of our attention was on a slew of alumni from The Challenge, Real World and Are You The One (the "Trifecta" as we call it here), as well as the #Melena showmance from Big Brother and the queen of Making The Band, Aubrey O'Day. But much of the focus in that Malibu mansion was on someone else.

The cast of The Rookie. (Credit: ABC)

Multi-talented entertainer Cameron Armstrong, who first made waves on the 2017 music competition series Boy Band, found himself juggling exes Alexis and Ariana, and his complicated relationships with the both of them was a talking point in last year's summer of love. When he was the first one eliminated on the show that eventually produced the group In Real Life (who have since disbanded as its members are now pursuing solo careers), Cameron turned his attention to acting. And on the same network that aired his debut on national television, he played a small role of a nurse at a local hospital on the ABC police drama The Rookie, which centers around 45-year-old John Nolan (played by Nathan Fillion) in his first year serving in a cop in the Los Angeles Police Department, a far cry from being a former contractor in Pennsylvania.

In its second season and accompanying the very first timeslot occupied by Grey's Anatomy (10PM on Sunday nights on ABC), The Rookie has had some notable guest stars, including Shark Tank master Mark Cuban, Ali Larter, members of the L.A. Rams, Seth Green and Jeremy Davies. And earlier this month, Wild N' Out & Guy Code alum and Ariana Grande's ex Pete Davidson played the role of Nathan's half-brother who he met after the death of their dad, just after the release of his first comedy special for Netflix and the movie Big Time Adolescence on Hulu.

Someone else who's familiar to at least some in the MTV community has also made an appearance on Season 2 of The Rookie, and for this one you have to go all the way back a decade to find someone who almost pulled out one of the most impossible feats you can ever possibly do on The Challenge, as we await the new season of Total Madness to take shape in five days from now.

In 2008, MTV took a cue from what Bravo was doing in deciding to expand episodes of The Challenge, Real World and eventually most of its reality series content to 60 minutes rather than a half-hour. The Gauntlet III was the first to be given the hour treatment, followed by Season 20 of The Real World when Hollywood hosted that season in Tinseltown, the first to be held in the Los Angeles area since its second season a decade & a half earlier. The house that hosted RW XX was the first home of the CBS network's Los Angeles operations, and where some Viacom offices are located now in the company's new iteration.
   Hollywood saw where we saw trainer and fledging actor Joey Kovar struggle with drug and alcohol addiction which led to his untimely death a few years after he left the show. This was also the season that saw one of Real World's most unlikable characters, Greg, pull pranks and get fired for ditching improv work for modeling. And who can forget the night when some notable Challengers like Evan, Ace and others got to hung out with the roommates, which produced a romance between Real World Key West's first Challenge champ, Janelle, and Detroit hip-hop producer Will.
   After Greg was fired and Joey left to go back to Chicago, there were five roommates left standing: Will, Ruins rookie Briana, Dave (who infamously quit on The Island), Kimberly and Sarah. And in a season that got to document the roommates' common ambitions of making it big in the entertainment world, there was no way that the season could end with two beds left unoccupied, and that's where the producers went to work behind the fourth wall to activate the kind of backup plans that's always possible whenever there's a change in the cast roster for any MTV Reality series.

Whenever someone gets injured or is sent home for bad behavior early on in The Challenge, an alternate or two will step in to take their place. Those who watch Ex On The Beach know those who are slated to be exes are always on alert to travel down to where it is being filmed and make that famous entry onto the beach. And in the case of Real World, those finalists not chosen to be in the original group of seven strangers were always kept on standby to possibly fly to the house and join the cast in the event in the event someone leaves the house.
   It was in these scenarios that Heather Cooke flew to Las Vegas to replace Adam Royer after his wild behavior on the same season got him kicked out... and when her Rivals II partner Naomi left to tend to a death in the family, Cara Maria stepped in to be her partner and they went to the final. Adam's departure from Rivals came after a late night fight following the first challenge, and Leroy's friend Mike Ross flew in on short notice to join him as they, too, also made it to the end. And it was when Leroy himself got injured on Rivals III that saw Nelson Thomas and Amanda Garcia made their Challenge debuts after being part of the legendary AYTO Season 3 cast.

For what happened on Real World 20, two replacement roommates came to California to help the house finish out their experience in Hollywood: New Yorker Nick Brown and Wisconsin native Brittini Sherrod. Series co-executive producer Jim Johnston remembered, "After all the trials & tribulations with Joey and Greg, it's refreshing to have new roommates in the house. Nick and Brittini will bring a spirit of fun into this house that has been sorely lacking. They are ready for anything."
   For Nick, he would get a chance to test his skills in wanting to be a television host when he joined Kim and Sarah to visit the set of Entertainment Tonight on the Paramount Pictures lot and, with the help of host Kevin Frazier, were put right on the spot to interview Miss USA and Travis Barker's one-time wife, Shanna Moakler. For Brittini, she got to breeze along quietly with resuming her modeling career in Hollywood during a break from taking classes at Arizona State.
   For the two Real World Hollywood replacements, they would then go onto The Challenge and joining Kim on The Duel II - the season best known for that Adam and CT fight. Nick competed there of them but only had limited success, including toughening out an elimination where he suffered a hand injury... and Kim would make it halfway through that season while forging a romance with Dunbar. But for Brittini, she would take on an equally impossible task in this individual season.

This show's history and philosophy usually suggests that those who come here as rookies will usually get the first plane ticket out of town. The Hollywood crew joined Sydney alums Isaac & Shauvon as as first-time competitors in a season that also featured Challenge icons Mark, Landon, Evan, Brad, Paula, Katie and Ruthie in The Duel II's roster. But in that stacked field on the girls side, the ladder three were eliminated early as it opened up the game for everyone else.
   Brittini took advantage of that winning three daily challenges with Landon as her partner in two of them, and took out RW Denver alum Brooke in the week 3 elimination. But as among the last four ladies left standing in the last week of the regular season, she was sent into elimination against Diem with a spot in the final at stake, and she took out Diem there to earn her spot in the final, eventually falling to Rachel Robinson and finishing ahead of Aneesa in New Zealand, earning a cool $35,000. And usually, a result like this would earn a promising rookie the chance to get to better that result on future Challenge seasons.
   But Brittini -- now last named London after getting married to an L.A. EDM music producer not long ago -- instead took a different direction: going back to the entertainment world in eventually catching the acting bug. Her most prominent role was playing a Her IMDb page lists acting gigs such as being on Franklin & Bash, Black-ish, stunts in Spider-Man: Homecoming, and recently appearing as a bartender on NCIS: Los Angeles and Jane the Virgin. And she also played a waitress in 2014's Some Kind of Beautiful with Pierce Brosnan, Salma Hayek and Jessica Alba.

Brittini (center) on Black-ish (ABC)

And this brings us back to The Rookie: over a week ago, Episode 14 of Season 2 saw Officers Nolan and Nyla Harper (played by Meika Cox) find themselves discovering a murder with potential implications over national security, while Officer Tim Bradford (portrayed by Eric Winter) had to come to grips with his past when he met a homeless veteran.
   In one scene below, Officers Harper and Bradford got a call from a local resident named Barry Langley (played by ER alum Gil McKinney) over possible stalking allegations on him and his wife, Wendy - portrayed by Brittini herself. The couple claims that a drone has been flying above their house while she is going through her tanning routine to get her day started... and as they find out, it eventually comes to light: a young kid was using his drone to spy on Wendy's hot bod and it led Barry to shoot the drone down with his gun, and leading the cops to tell the youngster that what he did was against the law and got a slap in the wrist.
    Brittini captioned on Instagram after the week before last's episode of The Rookie aired, "Honored to work with this incredible cast and crew! WHAT AN EPISODE ! 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 And this house was 🔥 @therookieabc #therookie #therookieabc"

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Honored to work with this incredible cast and crew! WHAT AN EPISODE ! 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 And this house was 🔥 @therookieabc #therookie #therookieabc

A post shared by LONDON 👄 😉 (@brittinilondon) on Mar 15, 2020 at 11:46pm PDT

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