In March, The Real World Homecoming debuted on the streaming service Paramount+. It reunited the original cast of the long-running MTV reality series, bringing them back to New York City and offering viewers a way to see how both the subjects of the series and the world itself had changed in the intervening years.
In an article on the reunion show, Vulture’s Jen Chaney looked at one of the themes that made the original series so memorable. “What the first season of The Real World became most famous for were its conflicts involving race,” Cheney wrote. “Kevin [Powell], a poet, professor, and activist, frequently called out his roommates for racist behavior only to be met with defensive pushback that shifted all the blame onto him.”
Cheney notes that, in the first episode of the reunion series, Powell addresses this, saying, “Julie [Gentry] and I had the most famous argument in TV history on racism.”
In a new interview with Meredith Blake at the Los Angeles Times, Powell addressed race and The Real World even more directly. He mentions that he hadn’t expected to discuss race as much as he did on the original show, but points out that his own experiences prior to the show informed his positions.
“I was the oldest of the seven of us. I had been involved in the anti-apartheid movement,” Powell told the Times. “I was also a journalist and I was reporting on a lot of things that were happening. So that’s where all of that was coming from for me. “
The whole interview gives a good sense of Powell then and now — and how the debates within the show echoed vital national conversations.
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