BY DC CUEVA
ESTIMATED READING TIME: 27 Mins.
The story of MTV Reality represents the history of the non-scripted genre as it is recognized by fans and the industry, encompassing three decades of some of TV's most unique programming. As MTV marks its 40th anniversary this year, during 2021 DCBLOG's ExtraTime franchise is proud to offer this special Flashback series as we look back at some of the most memorable moments, greatest shows, incredible personalities and unique backstories that has shaped this entire genre.
And due to this story's poignant nature, the reflective mood this country is in now on the anniversary of the events of what happened twenty years ago and the date that this is being posted -- as well as the time that was needed to put this detailed & in-depth story together, DCBLOG's normal weekly coverage will not be presented this weekend. As a result, our content covering this week's fifth episode of MTV's The Challenge will instead be offered on here during next week's series of posts.
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| Photo: Getty Images |
Right now, we are living through some extraordinary moments in our lifetime here in the first two years of the 2020's. We've had to endure such a divisive and intense time in this country spurred on by last year's game-changing election, sandwiched in between a tumultuous prelude and stunning aftermath that came along with a change of occupancy at the White House. A year ago, a post-Memorial Day weekend shooting in Minneapolis set off a coast-to-coast firestorm of riots and racial tension that reignited the Black Lives Matter movement. And there have been many other events -- disasters, deaths and the like -- that has seen plenty of bad news dominate our headlines & our social feeds... and then, there's this.
On March 8, 2020, just four days after the cast & trailer was revealed for season 35 of MTV's The Challenge: Total Madness, a startling announcement by the World Health Organization jolted the planet as the spread of the coronavirus from the nation of China to all around the world would have a lasting effect on our way of life. COVID sent just about everything we take for granted and our plans for both last and this year into a state of panic and perhaps being either postponed or put aside altogether... and it still is affecting all of us as the Delta variant and vaccination has been on most people's minds of late, and where it has continued to be a hot-button topic on the road back to pre-pandemic normalcy.
All of these events have joined those days and moments where, every so often, you'll know exactly where you were when it took place, and you'll tell your kids about it once you get up there in age. If you have a grandparent in your family who's still alive, they'll probably tell you where they were when Pearl Harbor was bombed, when JFK was assassinated, when man stepped foot on the moon and when Nixon resigned. For your parents, it's likely they remember when Challenger exploded, when the Miracle on Ice happened, when the Berlin Wall fell and when O.J. Simpson was found not guilty.
And for us in this generation, there's the times when Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, Harvey, Irma and Ida hit, when Michael Jackson, Prince, Muhammad Ali and Kobe Bryant died, when same-sex marriage became law of the land, when the Red Sox and Cubs won the World Series, and when the last three Presidents were elected, among so many other things that have happened in the first two decades of this third millennium. And there are personal events and tragedies near and dear to us that didn't make national or global headlines but became days we would never forget... that includes the deaths of Challenge alums Diem Brown and Ryan Knight, and Are You The One's Alexis Eddy last year.
Living through such ordeals like what we're in now above is something that we all have gone through in the course of the last twenty-one months. But there's one person in the MTV Reality family who has gone through the surreal experience of the one moment scarred in the memories of most of us in these last two decades that was captured by the cameras of The Real World twenty years ago on this very day stuck in our collective memories. It's the person who takes on the role of being the senior competitor of this fall's Challenge season who has had the enigma of having her birthday on September 11 being scarred by the memories of that unforgettable Tuesday that changed this world.
The Real World Chicago was the first season of the show to be filmed over the summer, exchanging the possibility of lake-front snow and freezing cold temperatures in the winter for the long days in the sun and in the warm, humid summers by the Navy Pier and the beaches of Lake Michigan. It was also part of the show's expansion into a year-round franchise airing two seasons in a one year's span - now the industry standard for other reality franchises. And it would be this Chicago season that would serve as the undercard to what would be, until the emergence of Jersey Shore, MTV's highest-rated series: the first family of rock 'n roll in The Osbournes with patriarch Ozzy, wife Sharon and kids Kelly & Jack.
And while it was never shown on camera at all, there were protests outside the house in the Wicker Park district over artists and those hippies who call their part of town home not wanting commercial interests to take over their part of town. There were reports of paint being splashed on the entrance into the house, a shooting that take place not far from the house, and other disturbances that plagued the behind-the-scenes aspects of production and even made local news in the nation's third-largest city. But nearly two decades later, the neighborhood has calmed to where a fitness center now resides in the old house, as Wicker Park has become one of the most distinctive parts of this place they call "The City of Broad Shoulders."
In the Real World house, Tuesday, September 11th began like many others: the house just going about their morning, just as the nearly 9 million residents in Chicagoland did in going to school, college and to work as it was getting into the post-summer grind. Aneesa was preparing to celebrate her 20th birthday, but who had to deal -- as she and the house did -- with Tonya and her being on the phone almost 24/7 with her boyfriend Justin back home in Washington State, and she reluctantly gave the phone to the birthday girl as she talked with friends and family back home in Philadelphia. Off-camera, MTV had planned to do publicity photo shoots all around town with the group to eventually bring images of them into both the print & online media in show promotion when their time on TV would come.
But as the work day had begun, Lower Manhattan would all of a sudden become a war zone: at 8:46AM, an American Airlines plane, Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles, flew intentionally into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, all as French brothers Jules & Gédéon Naudet filmed what was the only footage of that incident, which along with footage it taped for a documentary on members of a local fire station, was then made into a CBS documentary a year later. Just seventeen minutes later, a hijacked United Airlines plane -- Flight 175 also a Boston-L.A. flight -- crashed into the South Tower next door as local news helicopters captured the horrifying moment as it happened in front of the world's eyes.
At 9:37AM ET -- 35 minutes after United 175, a third hijacked plane crashed within the hour... this time, it was American Flight 77 down in Washington, D.C. which just took off from Dulles Airport and was also destined for L.A., when it went down on the side of the Pentagon, killing 64 on board and 125 people in the home of America's defense and its Armed Forces. And a half-hour later, a fourth jet -- United Flight 93 which had taken off from Newark, NJ and bound for San Francisco -- was diverted with its eyes also set on the nation's capital, but thanks to the efforts of the 44 passengers they successfully foiled the hijackers' plans when it crashed in Stonycreek Township outside of Pittsburgh.
Someone who got it on a bit in the Real World house was Cara Kahn: thanks to getting to bring plenty of locals into her bed throughout her stay in Chicago, she earned the title of "Biggest Playa" when the show honored its most memorable moments on the occasion of its Season 20 in Hollywood in 2008. She had a famous relationship with "Rock Star" Jared, among many others who she hooked up with in town, but Cara also had one other understated claim to fame... at least to those in the District of Columbia.
Like so many others on that day, the group instantly thought of those loved ones who might be affected, and not only was Cara concerned about her brother, this was most especially the case with Kyle: his girlfriend at the time, Nicole, lived in New York along with his sister near the fallen towers. As is always the case during times of major disaster, he was desperate to find them and every attempt to reach them via phone had fallen on dial tones and the announcements that the lines were busy. But after many attempts, he finally got in contact with the both of them who were safe and sound.
And for us in this generation, there's the times when Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, Harvey, Irma and Ida hit, when Michael Jackson, Prince, Muhammad Ali and Kobe Bryant died, when same-sex marriage became law of the land, when the Red Sox and Cubs won the World Series, and when the last three Presidents were elected, among so many other things that have happened in the first two decades of this third millennium. And there are personal events and tragedies near and dear to us that didn't make national or global headlines but became days we would never forget... that includes the deaths of Challenge alums Diem Brown and Ryan Knight, and Are You The One's Alexis Eddy last year.
Living through such ordeals like what we're in now above is something that we all have gone through in the course of the last twenty-one months. But there's one person in the MTV Reality family who has gone through the surreal experience of the one moment scarred in the memories of most of us in these last two decades that was captured by the cameras of The Real World twenty years ago on this very day stuck in our collective memories. It's the person who takes on the role of being the senior competitor of this fall's Challenge season who has had the enigma of having her birthday on September 11 being scarred by the memories of that unforgettable Tuesday that changed this world.
Spies, Lies & Allies represents the eighteenth overall Challenge season (15 regular & three spinoffs) that Aneesa Ferreira has competed on, starting back when it was The Real World-Road Rules Challenge when she debuted on the first Battle of the Sexes in 2002. Even as she turns 40 years old today, it's hard to believe that she is still doing these shows after all these years: her time on MTV dates back to when Total Request Live was the channel's biggest draw, when some of her fellow competitors this season were in their early years of elementary school and kindergarten, and reality TV was just starting to become a cultural behemoth, years before YouTube, social media and everything else.
Aneesa is one of the many alums of the show that have seen the evolution of The Challenge from just a spinoff of Real World and Road Rules to give the show's alums more MTV airtime, to where now it is the prominent piece of a franchise that gave birth to an entire entertainment genre -- not to mention TV's first reality competition show. She has seen so much take place: her earlier seasons were simplistic in being a friendly battle of those two shows, while it has gradually put both of them out of the current, regular MTV schedule as the intensity of the action has only gotten harder as has the drama that takes place out of the field of play, and the field of contenders increase to a global one beyond our borders.
And Aneesa's career has spanned both eras of MTV and CBS being under common Viacom ownership when it was two years into their first marriage. There, Big Brother and Survivor were just starting up when she began her reality TV career at the dawn of the reality TV boom, and who now competes with alumni of those two shows and many others in the second Viacom/CBS alliance. Her competing on The Challenge All-Stars earlier this spring also reflected her status as a legend in these annals despite not tasting a title over her two-decade career, while also being part of the new way to watch TV in these times as it was streamed on ViacomCBS' entry into the streaming wars of Paramount+.
All the while, she is lesbian, part of that pioneering breed of the LGBT community who have been well-represented on MTV Reality shows the past three decades, and whose lineage also includes Queer Eye's Karamo Brown, the late Pedro Zamora and so many others who take pride in proving that love is love, no matter what your sexual identity is. But for Aneesa, her MTV journey began, like them and most others in Challenge Nation, on the show that started it all for the whole reality genre.
And while it was never shown on camera at all, there were protests outside the house in the Wicker Park district over artists and those hippies who call their part of town home not wanting commercial interests to take over their part of town. There were reports of paint being splashed on the entrance into the house, a shooting that take place not far from the house, and other disturbances that plagued the behind-the-scenes aspects of production and even made local news in the nation's third-largest city. But nearly two decades later, the neighborhood has calmed to where a fitness center now resides in the old house, as Wicker Park has become one of the most distinctive parts of this place they call "The City of Broad Shoulders."
That nonsense aside, Real World Chicago was like any other season that came just before the game-changing Vegas season a year later: the roommates simply living their lives and enjoying what the second city has to offer. A romance blossomed between future NFL Network host Kyle Brandt and southern belle Keri Evans, while there was tension with Aneesa and Washington State's Tonya Cooley - who would later go on to a good Challenge career of her own which was later scarred by an unpleasant off-camera controversy. The group got to work two jobs for Chicago's parks and recreations department: lifeguards on the beaches during the summer, and doing a Halloween-themed play for local school kids in the fall. And the group also got to spend weekends with both Kyle's parents in their weekend retreat, and up in New England where they spent a night sleeping in a haunted house.
Outside their window, summer 2001 had plenty going on: Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh being executed, congressman Gary Condit's extramarital scandal, the Caribbean plane crash that killed Aaliyah, and Napster being shut down just as iTunes was released as did Suge Knight. On September 10, Chicago's greatest athlete, Michael Jordan, announced a third & last return to the NBA, while his "Jam" video co-star Michael Jackson performed the second of two anniversary concerts in New York, days after a surprise cameo at the Video Music Awards alongside Justin Timberlake and 'NSYNC. And across the pond, Charles Ingram won £1 million on the U.K. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, only to become a goat for where allegations later emerged that he cheated his way to the cash.
As it turned out, their time would take place just after filming ended when Season 11 premiered the following January, right after the end of Season 10 with Mike "The Miz" Mizanin and Coral Smith headlining matters and with tremendous futures in the WWE and The Challenge awaiting them. But while all of that was happening, and in an atmosphere with just that phone and a computer to keep contact with the world outside them -- and where it was only years away from social media and smartphones, something that would change everyone's lives was taking place hundreds of miles to the east of Chicago. Coincidentally, it was in the city that The Miz made his national TV debut and in where our world changed forever.
New York City was also getting into the post-summer rhythm: the Giants had lost the NFL season's first Monday night game the night before in Denver, while the town was preparing for the fall edition of its semi-annual Fashion Week activities. The remnants of Hurricane Erin made it a rainy start to the week in the Big Apple, and the skies had cleared out for an above-average weather day in the 80's with barely a breeze and not a single hint of what would occur when the city was at rush hour.
Roughly an hour & a half after impact, the two largest skyscrapers of America's biggest city came crashing down below, and with it the lives of 2,763 people -- those who worked in the WTC, nearly 350 members of the Fire Department of New York, 70 members of their partners in the New York and Port Authority Police Departments, and the 157 on board the two doomed aircraft... but none included one who was supposed to be on one of those two five-hour flights from New England to California.
A year earlier, The Real World paid a visit to another of America's most beloved cities: New Orleans, which was also a few years away from experiencing a catastrophic disaster of epic proportions. But unlike what was the case in Chicago, the town where jazz is king and things move to a different rhythm welcomed the show with open arms in time for the annual celebration known as Mardi Gras -- the time of year where it's nothing but a 24/7 party all around the Bayou.
The first of two Real World seasons to take place in NOLA saw a first for the franchise: a forbidden relationship set against the backdrop of "don't ask, don't tell" -- Danny Roberts welcoming his service man boyfriend to town on the condition that his identity be concealed due to the policy at the time that forbid the LGBT community from serving in the U.S. military. This was also the season that introduced future Challenge legend Jamie Murray, Oxygen star Melissa Howard, and that now famous song by David Bloom on its local public access TV channel where the house worked at for their group job.
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The one houseguest who captured much of the buzz for different reasons that summer of 2000 was Julie Stoffer, who came to the show from Milwaukee but who had spent quite a bit of time beforehand in Salt Lake City attending Brigham Young University. As a Mormon, the college conforms to strict guidelines in tune with America's most controversial and complicated religion: BYU forbids students from engaging in things that are frowned upon by them but acceptable in other aspects of American life -- no drugs, no alcohol, and no engaging in sexual activity, among other naughty behavior.
And in this case, Julie moved into a house where she got to cohabit with those of the opposite gender before getting married... a no-no at BYU, and upon the show debuting she was expelled from college. On the show itself, she had to deal with a visit from her parents who expressed concern about how her living in that environment with other people was against their beliefs. The topic of Mormonism being discussed there and of religion among young people was one of the many aspects that made The Real World more than just a docu-based reality television program.
Stoffer had gotten back to the real world of sorts outside of the TV cameras when, while in Boston for a weekend visit, the then 21-year-old got into it with her boyfriend at the time on Monday night and had thoughts about canceling her flight to L.A. to see him. A friend of hers drove her to Logan International the next morning, but decided just minutes before checking in to cancel her trip out west... it proved to save her life in the end, though it was tense moments for her mom back home until Julie called her two hours later to say that she was safe and sound.
Julie wasn't the only person spared by the events of 9/11: straight out of the success of Rush Hour 2 with Chris Tucker, action star Jackie Chan had plans to shoot scenes atop one of the Twin Towers for a film that never made theaters, but plans changed due to a late script change. And one who later became a good friend with Trisha Cummings of the Sydney season later that decade, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, also had tickets to fly on the same doomed plane as Julie, but who found that his itinerary had the flight numbers mixed up... and he too, was given a reprieve amidst this terrible tragedy.
So ended the two hours that changed America, made possible by nineteen hijackers affiliated with Al-Qaeda on board those four planes as part of a carefully & successfully-coordinated plan that turned into the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. All domestic air traffic came to a halt while U.S.-bound flights from overseas were diverted to Canada and elsewhere. And an entire nation sat in a standstill for an entire week... and as we mark the 20th anniversary of this tragedy today, Al-Qaeda has since retaken its homeland of Afghanistan just after U.S. troops had left and so have millions of Afghans who have escaped in the past month from their autocratic rule.
Five days after a Video Music Awards where Britney Spears performed with a snake around her neck, MTV suddenly come into grips with something its generation had never gone through: an attack on America like what happened on December 7, 1941. It and other networks in the ViacomCBS family broke into regular programming to carry CBS News' non-stop coverage of 9/11, while VH1 brought the local angle of the tragedy in airing WCBS-TV's local coverage as attention turned to the recovery efforts at Ground Zero. Afterwards, MTV helped to comfort its audience with music videos & news updates preempting regular programming as Kurt Loder and his news team helped make sense of this tragedy to its 12-34 year-old demographic.
When it has aired on MTV in its three decades (even including this spring's Homecoming of the first cast on Paramount+), The Real World had always aired at midweek -- but not on 9/11: a midseason episode of Season 10 -- whose house was up the street from where the Twin Towers stood, had to be preempted due of CBS news coverage, which also included President Bush's speech to the nation from the Oval Office. When it did return a week later, producers chose to not edit the remaining episodes or footage of Lower Manhattan to pay tribute to the city's enduring spirit, which was also on display when Carson Daly and his fellow TRL hosts made an emotional return to its Times Square studio as they talked with celebs who also went through the same ordeal as everyone else.
Lost in the madness of the 2000 presidential election was that the Republican Party gained, for the first time since the Eisenhower administration, unified control of both the White House and Congress after taking both the House & Senate during the Clinton years. That meant South Dakota's Tom Daschle had to again play second fiddle as Senator Minority Leader, just as he had for most of the GOP's rule of Capitol Hill after taking over for the retiring George Mitchell. But that summer came a stunning move: Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords (R) declared his independence and switched his caucus allegiance to the Democrats, the first time party control in any either U.S. legislative branch had been switched during a session... and Sen. Daschle became the top man in the upper chamber for the rest of the 107th Session.
For each of the 535 members of Congress there's a team that works behind the scenes in D.C. and back home, and one of those who worked for the South Dakotan was Jeff Nussbaum, who served as deputy communications director and speechwriter, and scripted the words the Senator would say at press conferences. He also just so happens to be a sibling of Cara's as she is his youngest sister... and when the show was airing it was in the midst of not only his boss being a prominent figure in D.C., but also her being on TV and something else that also took place that fall: Sen. Daschle's office was also among the many targets of the anthrax attacks on politicians & press, all after what took place beforehand.
On the morning of 9/11, the cast were going around the streets of a Chicago that was being deserted with them having no idea what was going on until the radio in their van reported what was going on in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. When the arrived at a bar down the street from Wrigley Field where the Cubs were slated to host the Reds that night (but was postponed along with the rest of the week's MLB schedule and the only other time outside of COVID that American sports was completely shut down this century), the cast first saw the images that would forever scar their lives.
Chris Beckman, a Boston painter and gay man, remembered that even the crew behind the scenes had been affected: "Our cameraman was from New York City and he was crying. We were all upset. I ended up having a friend whose ex-lover was lost that day." And when they came home from what became the start to an all too surreal moment, this was what happened...
A recent trend in MTV Reality programming -- whether it's later Real World seasons or the Teen Mom franchise -- has been of greater interaction between the cast members and the behind-the-scenes crew being seen on camera. But to avoid the embarrassment those behind the fourth wall had of seeing one of their own get into bed with a Season 1 original castmate in New York a decade earlier, interaction in this manner was strictly prohibited except in exceptional circumstances -- house violence, the hurricanes that ravaged the Key West season and other matters.
In the case in the Chicago cast, they were kept informed of what was going on in the three epicenters of a TV showing CBS' coverage being offered by production, just as cameras captured their reactions during this time of uncertainty. There were rumors that swirled around the grapevine what happened in this instance was staged, but because Kyle and Cara were personally affected by those closest to them being near where the attacks occurred this was not the case. And Aneesa and Tonya's phone scrabble continued with the one whose birthday was marred by all this getting the upper hand.
Given Philadelphia's proximity to both New York and Washington as part of the megapolis of nearly 50 million people on the East Coast, Aneesa says of this, "It's a lot to take in... it's scary because you don't know what's coming next." Chris adds, "What can you do? You can only pray. And it's just hard to keep pace when something so destructive happens and why? Why? Why?" And Tonya was left to say, "I'm scared for our own country. (The terrorists) took our own planes, our own people and threw them into our own buildings and blew them up. It was so efficient."
Keri opened up in the confessional, "The hate these terrorists have in their heart... if you are capable of taking this many lives, then God have mercy in their souls." And when she came into Kyle's room she foreshadowed what the next two decades would be like: "I think that this experience is really gonna open the eyes of everyone who has never experienced a war before. Just listening to my grandpa and what they had to go through, and how much we take for granted."
Theo Gantt, a preacher's son from Southern California, led the roommates in a moment of prayer as he summed it up: "United States, we are always so badass. And we just got our @$$es kicked right now." He added, "I've never felt this level of patriotism. Most of my friends don't like cops... now I get to see really what their job is about. Going into a 110-story building to look for people while it got hit by a plane -- that's love for people right there."
There have been a number of moments in the 7,305 days since that day where America has felt divided -- politically, ideologically, geographically, and for other reasons. But in the days, weeks and months that followed 9/11, the over 280 million who call the United States home at the time of this defining moment came together like never before. The sights of Americana usually reserved for the 4th of July, summertime and the Olympics were everywhere from sea to shining sea... people couldn't go anywhere that autumn without seeing an American flag being draped on houses and buildings.
On the National Day of Remembrance that Friday, the house joined with many other Chicagoans for a public prayer at the Daley Center, and like most Americans did during that somber weekend bought pins and flags as they would find their sense of patriotism during one of this nation's darkest hours. That evening, the cast sat on the same front stoop that had paint being spilled on their door as they sung patriotic songs and lit candles with their neighbors in Wicker Park. And it was during this Aneesa and Tonya reconciled, knowing that love of country beats petty house actions.
The one person who has seen The Real World's three-decade evolution, co-creator Jonathan Murray, recollected in the Chicago season book, "I think the September 11 episode that we have is pretty amazing. We just kept our cameras rolling during that period of time and what we captured I think is representative of what a lot of young people were feeling: that sense of helplessness and sudden realization that just because you're in America doesn't mean that you're protected from all of the awful things that happen in this world. You really see this realization on the part of our cast members, and perhaps their generation, that their innocence is gone and they're face-to-face with their own mortality."
One who served as Murray's equal as both co-creator and executive producer for the show's first decade, the late Mary-Ellis Bunim, added of how events took place outside the house affected the filing process: "No, the only change we made was that we gave the cast a TV set for a couple of days so that they could see what was going on. But no, I think the interesting things is, for instance, Aneesa and Tonya, who were having a lot of disagreements about the phone, suddenly realized how petty those were and suddenly came together and overcame those difficulties because they realized these were more important things to be thinking about."
Thirty-eight years earlier on another dark day in American history, CBS newsman Dan Rather was in Dallas to do an interview with John Nance Garner - Vice President under FDR, not knowing that he would be the first to report that John F. Kennedy had died before his colleague Walter Cronkite made the tearful announcement. When he took over for him on the CBS Evening News, he opened the program that aired on that fateful day, "September 11, 2001... you will remember this day as long as you live."
What was supposed to be a day for getting to celebrate Aneesa's 20th birthday turned into something else: a national nightmare as the world bared witness to the worst terrorist attack in American history and the first sign that the first two decades of the 21st century would not be as kind. In her section of the Real World Chicago book Aneesa summed up the thoughts of her cast living through the day that's still scarred 20 years later: "I think the fact that we were on The Real World during Sept. 11 is going to really make things different. We lived through tough times. We're young. We're the new generation."
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