Real World TV Show - The New Orleans Melissa Interview, Part I - Real World Photos & Videos, Real World Reviews & Real World Recaps | TWoP

One of the breakout roommates on this year's edition of Real World has to be Melissa Howard. Whether you love her sense of humor, or are annoyed by her stated desire to be in the spotlight, she captured your attention. I wish I had some exciting story about how I searched high and low to find Melissa, but the truth is that she came to us. She started posting on our forums a few weeks ago, and recently, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to talk to Melissa in a free-ranging, two-hour telephone conversation. The topics discussed ran the gamut, from the editing on the show to meeting former Real World-ers to *NSYNC. It seems fitting to start the interview the same way that the show starts -- with the true story of seven strangers. Kim: So, what's the story behind the opening with, "Picked to live in a maaansion...." Melissa: Ugh! Oh, God. Could I be more annoying? You would record each thing. It would be like: "This is the true story. This is the true story. This is the true story." Then, move on to the one. "Of seven strangers. Of seven strangers." And you've got this director, like, "Now feel it!" I'm like, "It's a fucking opening, shut up!" Of course, my role on the show is to be the firecracker, and they're like, "We don't want you to read yours normal." So I had to be like, "This is the true story, uh huh, of seven strangers..." All these things are subliminal, I think. Like, "Let's just play with Melissa with the class issues. She's never had a mansion." So, I'm supposed to be like, "Oh my God, a maaansion!" So, after saying it forty times, I was just fucking with the director. I started having orgasms; I was like, "Aaaah. Picked to live in a maaansion." And so many times, they'd be like, "Melissa, shut up!" [laughs] So, I did it and then they picked the worst one. Julie hates hers too. We were watching the show the other day, and we're like, "Oh my God! You sound like a man!" Kim: I remember one scene where you and Julie were talking about white beauty standards, and the beauty myth, and all of that. And I thought that was so real, because it was something that every woman, no matter how rich you are, how poor, what race, whatever, struggles with. I think this is the first time in the whole run of Real World that anyone had addressed the issue, about women being insecure because of the media. It's such a big issue. Melissa: It was reinforced all the time, when we would do photo shoots or whatever. I remember the makeup artist saying, "Well, it's come back to us that you can't do glamorous." So, they'd put me in this kooky-ass outfit, and I'd be like, "Whatever." And you feed into it. Every time you see Julie, she'll have a skateboard, or a tank top and some jeans on. Kim: Right. Julie's the cute, white-bread, athletic one. Kelley's the beautiful one. You're the spunky one. Melissa: Totally. We were taking photos for MTV that they would send out to magazines. And I remember my locations were in a park and at a zoo. Julie's locations were at a zoo and skateboarding in the middle of Bourbon Street. Kelley's locations were at a mansion and like a fucking wine cellar. Jamie's locations were in that same mansion and in a library. And I said to them -- and I was just kidding, because we were at the zoo, and I was standing in front of these fucking flamingos -- "Okay, why don't you guys just put me on a shrimp boat and have me squat and pee? What is this bullshit?" [laughs] And they would have me in outfits that I would never wear. And after a while, you just stop arguing and just go with it. You have no control. I made racial jokes, never realizing that it could be parlayed into something else on TV. I mean, I was like, "Oh, God, we're living in a plantation house. What are you going to do, make me pick cotton in the back?" But it was funny, and you'd have to know me to know that was funny, but then you see it on TV and I look racially fixated. Kim: It's like the second thing you say on the season, so that's our introduction to you. Melissa: Mmm hmm. It's horrible. And I knew Danny was gay the second I met him, when he said that he had a secret. But I wasn't going to full attack him the second he said it, and be like, "Are you gay?" Kim: Yeah, because that's what everybody remembers about Teck. Having watched every season of the show, over the years, the people have become a lot more guarded about what they reveal. If you watch the New York season or the L.A. season, they seemed to be very much themselves. Melissa: I think a lot of it boils down to the fact that we are nine years into it, and the houses have become sets. There are lights. There are microphones. You are lit in your interviews a certain way; they change it to match your skin tone. It is very much a television production. The people that you know very, very well on the show are the people that were just honest. I love watching episodes with Julie because it wasn't like pulling teeth in interviews. Julie is very upfront, very honest. That is Julie. Sure, they show all of our bad days, and she's very much a functional, normal girl. She doesn't live her life like, "At BYU this doesn't happen," like really wide-eyed. But she was honest, and when you watch that and you understand where she's coming from, you never have to question, "I wonder what happened before that" and "I wonder what they edited out." She and I have that in common, where sometimes the show seems very much fixated on one of us. That's because the editor was not sitting there pulling things out of his ass, because we actually said it. It was very painful for me to be like, "David's not a good example of a black man in America." That embarrasses me, because I'm part black. But that's how I felt at the time. Sure, I was totally devastated when I heard that on national television. I thought, "Oh my God, black America's going to hate me." But that's how I felt! I was not trying to be PC. Kim: What's the thing they've had on the show so far that really surprised you? Either something you forgot happened, or something where you were like, "Wait, they said that about me? Or about somebody else?" Melissa: Yeah, it's your life, but it's being narrated by six other people. You are somewhat operating on stereotypes. I won't lie. I walked in that door and I was like, "Jamie is this rich, white boy, and I am not gonna like him because he's privileged." It had nothing to do with his skin color. They would tweak that and all of a sudden, it was, "Melissa doesn't like rich, white people." I'm actually very normal. But the show is not designed to be a comedy. Sure, I had bad days. It was the first time I was away from Florida. People weren't into the music I was into. They weren't into what I was about. It was hard to adjust because I'd never surrounded myself with such a different group of people. I guess there's so much to each of us that they couldn't possibly show it all. Like, they say they don't typecast, but nobody would know that Jamie is the funniest guy I've ever met in my life because he wasn't cast to be that. He was cast to be the white guy that no one really likes because he's privileged. And they've done everything in their power to [make it that way]. I mean, Jamie's interviews would be three hours, and they'd interrogate him with these frantic questions about homosexuality. Of course, he'd get frustrated. He's a straight man. If you ask him, "Would you hang out with a gay guy in his bedroom?" of course he's going to be like, [frustratedly] "Nooo!" But when he said, "Is gay PC?" -- Jamie is very much cognizant of being politically incorrect because he is a businessman at the core. He recognizes, you know, "I can't go on TV being like -- 'I don't like gay people.'" Jamie has no problem with gay people at all. But he says, "Is gay PC?" and all of a sudden, he's this homophobic asshole. And I have a problem with him at the swamp tour, and all of a sudden, he's racist. And it's so not like that. I'm very, very sensitive when it comes to race, and there comes a time where you pick and choose your battles. This is like a fifty-year-old swamp-tour guide who's lived in Louisiana all his life and probably doesn't interact with black people. That was a lost cause, and I probably should have been like, "Okay, that sucks." But I was sour the whole time. And Jamie was just upset because, at that point, we had developed a really, really close friendship. And he was like, "I really don't like seeing you sad. I really don't like seeing you angry." But if you notice, when we were in the car, Jamie's mouth wasn't even moving... Kim: Yeah! They put words into his mouth that he didn't even say at that point. Melissa: What's interesting is that the sound is recorded on a completely different tape. So, there's a transcriptionist back in L.A. that types in every single word we've said. And so, when you see shots of us in a restaurant, and you have the back of my head, and all you see is the reaction of the person I'm talking to? I could be saying different words, then they put the soundbite on, then they put music on top, or close in and do camera shots, and it really looks seamless to someone who's not paying attention. Kim: Someone who's not like me, who's pausing and going over it with a fine-tooth comb. Melissa: So, Jamie wasn't saying it, and it builds him up to be this really insensitive guy, and there's Jamie's story arc. I've just become knowledgeable about this after the show, as I've watched the show, and I've talked to loggers, and I've talked to editors that are telling me this crazy stuff, and I'm just like, "Are you kidding me?" Ugh, and it just kills me because I absolutely adore Jamie. And he's not even on the show unless he's not being a good person. Kim: Unless he's fitting into the character that they've crafted. Melissa: Oh, it's horrible because Jamie is sooo funny and people have a hard time understanding. They're like, "Did you really like Jamie? He didn't even care that you were black?" And I'm like, "But you don't understand what that was about." Jamie and I were together like co-dependent style. Every day, all the time, eating bagels, doing yoga. They developed our friendship as some kind of romance, and it was so not that. Of course, I was teasing him all the time, like "I love you." But never would it be like, "Oh, Jamie and I are going to start a family." Never that way! Kelley and I never competed for him. She did not like him and he did not like her. I think that the storyline and that the plots were there, and we were just supposed to fulfill them. Whether it be with slanted questions, whether it be with the way we looked on camera. I looked like a biracial, feisty thing. Jamie looked like a privileged white guy. So, Kelley and Jamie were supposed to fall in love. Julie and I were not supposed to be friends. And Julie and I -- we love each other. I hang out with her every day, almost. But they don't develop our friendship on TV because the disrespectful, anti-religion, anti-naïveté biracial girl is not ever supposed to like the wide-eyed little white girl. Kim: I saw an interview with you where you talked about the disagreement you had with David, where he was like, "Fine, don't talk to me for three months." And they made it look like you apologized the day. Can you give me a timeline on how that actually went down? Melissa: What happened was it was the third day [of filming]. And of course, we're gonna do Bourbon Street. We're in New Orleans, are you fucking kidding me? So we do Bourbon Street, and sure, I did have a bad day. But when they closed up on me, like, with the three empty drinks in front of me? All those drinks weren't mine. So, they pan to an interview where I'm like, "Sure, I've had a bad day. I'm gonna have a drink." Okay, I'm a twenty-three-year-old girl, and that's what you do when you have a bad day. And I don't know, maybe all of America's not that way. But that's what I've grown up seeing on TV, that's what I've grown up seeing in my house. That's just how you do it. Kim: Yeah, everyone I talked to was like, "What's the big deal? She just said she's going to go out and have a drink. Who doesn't do that?" Happy hour, that's what it's all about. Melissa: The day before, David and I had gone out, and we bonded. We were cognizant of the fact that hey, you know, we're the two minorities in the house, and we're going to fill that role. So, I'm talking to David and I'm like, "Do you feel weird?" And we were talking about the show. But they edit it in such a way that it seems like we're just talking about our personal lives. Kim: Well, plus, they'll never, ever show someone talking about the fact that you're on a television show. We're not supposed to know that you guys know, I guess. I don't know what that's about. Melissa: And it plays so much of a role in how we live our lives that it's not even funny. So, then the day, we go out to Bourbon Street and have some drinks. And sure I was a little bit drunk, but I was having a good time. None of the roommates reacted the way he did. What happened was, he took offense to the fact that I had a bad day and I didn't come to him. When he was like that, and he was so obstinate, and so just shitty with me? I was angry. Because I don't deal with people well when I've just met them and they're expecting all this Kum-ba-ya Oprah's Book Club with me. I don't know you! So, I leave the room. I'm in a huff and puff. And what looks like the day, I apologize to him. HELLO! Three weeks went by, and he didn't talk to anybody in the house. I'm like, "Is he going to be mad at the whole house on account of some bullshit I had with him?" If he's going to do that, he can bear that with me, and not the whole house. Kim: So [that disagreement] was the first three weeks you were in the house, if [the fight] happened the third day. Melissa: David and I have that conversation in the kitchen and I'm like, "Look, you're really sour to everybody in the house. If it's because of me calling you out on day three..." Because you know, we're supposed to be Brady Bunch at first. And day three, they're getting this footage of me like, "Bitch, I don't know you!" And you know they're like eating it up. Oh, and just for the record, there was never a physical attraction with David. Kim: Have people said that to you? Melissa: Oh, totally. People are like, "Oh, Melissa, you liked David and he didn't like you." Kim: I think it was the first show, and you were like, "Yeah, his muscles are too big." Melissa: Yeah. And there were other attributes that I...well. [mumbles] And that day we had that apology, and I was upset because it was a two-hour standoff in that kitchen. I was like, "Are you gonna talk to me?" I look at it now, and I crack up. But that day it really hurt that he was just going to shut me out for that bullcrap, and it had been a month! If you watch the show closely, there's really not much interaction with him. David's story is an individual story. My story ties into Julie's story: learning. My story ties into Jamie's story: becoming friends with a girl and dealing with racial insensitivity. Unless it's Matt and David, because Matt has this like, grassroots, "Let's include David" thing. And I'm like, "Fuck that. I don't deal well with that." And for the most part, you'll never see people confronting David, except me. I was the only one. And one director came to me, and he said, "Melissa, you realize that you guys are going to all look like wimps, and that you're all like bowing down to David and catering to his attitude." And that's why I said, "I'm not going to cater to your attitude." Because they feed you the questions, and you're like, "No, I'm not catering to his attitude." Done. Soundbite. Got it. And I wouldn't. Maybe the white people didn't want to feel like, "Oh God, we don't like the black guy," and have it come off racist. Because with that show, you will look racist if you make any comment about a black person and you're white, even though you're not [racist]. Kim: Well, I think part of it is that on most seasons, there is maybe one black person. Sometimes there's two, but for the most part, there's one black person. So since [David's] the one black person, he represents black people, all of them. And so if you don't like him as a person or you don't get along with him as a person, that means you don't get along with black people or you don't like black people. Melissa: Right, and to the masses, what you see on the edited version with a little Rage Against the Machine in the background, that's what you get. It hurt me so bad -- I would take him aside and be like, "David, you may not like it, but we are filming a national television show, and we're the only black folks. Sure, I act like a fool sometimes, but it's got to stop." You know, they're not going to show that, because I was very worried about the character portrayal. And I tell you what, when I saw David in his casting special, I was like, "Whoa, who's that?" He was funny! He was nice! Kim: I know! What happened? Melissa: I know. And sure, he was into himself, you know, "I don't want to be human." But that really is David. If you knew how funny he is, and how laid-back he can be, you would get that he doesn't want to be human. He is one of these hard workers, you know, he grew up in squalor and he didn't have things. He sent money home to his mom, like, that's the real David. What happened is, it's camera attention and ladies every night, and it turns into, "You guys aren't investing time in me, so why should I invest time in you?" And it becomes the story. What's funny is, if you add up all the times I talked to David, it was about five hours, in total. We were not on speaking terms in Africa. We were not really on speaking terms at home. But [the editors] like to tidy things up. We went to the bagel shop and I said, "Wow, you're a better person." Done. They don't need any more of that storyline. Kim: Well, it's just like with Jamie and Kelley. They had this big fight. And then suddenly at the end of the episode, they made up. I don't buy it, you know? Melissa: I don't even understand that episode at all. I mean, I watched it, and I was like, "Julie, what? What is this?" and Julie's like, "I don't know!" I was confused. Kim: Yeah, a lot of people were like, "Okay, that totally came out of nowhere. Jamie and Kelley never had problems with each other before. And suddenly they hate each other?" Clearly, they were just short of footage this week, and they had to dredge something up. Kim: So, let's talk about the interviews. One of my favorite games to play while I'm watching the show, when they show an interview, is to try to guess what question the person is answering. I've heard that, for example, when they thought there might be tension between you and David, they'd ask you a lot of questions about David, so that you kind of get the feeling, "Oh, clearly, they're going to make a story about this." Melissa: Right. In the very beginning, David and I had so much conflict and we weren't talking at all, that I thought my story was just going to be David, and after a while, I was like, "You know what? I won't talk about him because I have a personality outside of that." But...it's three hours. Kim: Three hours, once a week? Melissa: Yeah, every Monday or Tuesday. With Julie and me, the directors really didn't have to poke and prod and pull teeth. They'd be like, "Melissa, do you like David?" and I'd be like, "Well, let me tell you a little something about David." And I would just go off. And the same with Julie, and so they would call us "five-tapers" because they had to change the tape five times. Kim: What I don't understand is that you do an interview every week for three hours, and yet they use the same interviews over and over. Melissa: What happens is they have the sheet in front of them, and they are supposed to touch base on every single [issue]. I've seen the sheets. Sometimes the sheet will have four questions, and that means Jamie's coming in for an interview . Sometimes the sheet would be three or four pages, and I'd be like, "Oh, shit, Julie's coming in." And they poke and they prod. One director was so good at getting you to be honest. Even if you were like angry, sad, whatever. I mean, he was goooood. Kim: He should go work for the CIA or something. Melissa: He would sit you down and be like, "Well, Melissa, do you think that part of your anxiety with David could be a race and class issue? Do you think that because you didn't grow up poor, and yet you are black..." Of course, put me on an academic level with race and I'll go off. And, boom -- they have it. Kim: And that's why Melissa is always talking about race in her interviews -- because they ask you about it. Melissa: When I'm not on the show, I'm not talking about it. Kim: To someone who watches the show, they think, "My God, every time Melissa sits down she talks about this" or "Every time Julie sits down, she talks about BYU." But if you know a little bit more about the process, you know it's because you were asked about those things every time you sat down. Melissa: It's really a no-win situation. If I have someone in the house saying the "n-word," I know I'm going to answer for it in interviews. And this is how the interview could go -- if I don't call someone out and say, "You know what? You can't do that. You can't say that," in the interview, they're going to be like, "Why did you buckle?" And I'm not going to look at this director who's glaring at me and justify why I was a jackass. Kim: So, it also changes your behavior outside of the interview room. Melissa: It does, and they question you, and you're ready for it. Like, every Monday and Tuesday, those were the days where we knew what we were going to look like on camera. And hell yeah, we woke up early and put that makeup on! Kim: There's one interview where you have a stocking cap on, and you just look so different from any other time you were on camera, and I was just like, "Was she having a bad day?" What happened? Melissa: Oh, that was the day I cut my hair. Kim: Really! Melissa: They were not done interviewing me about standards of white beauty. They were not done interviewing me about disliking privileged white boys. They were not done interviewing me about my disillusionment with what was going down with David. And so I came in with that short haircut, and they were like, "Well, this is part two of last week's interview and now you have short hair." And I was like, "Well?" Kim: Oh, so you had to cover it up for continuity. Melissa: Totally. And that's almost an oxymoron [Real World continuity]. Continuity, what? You don't have to watch one show before to understand the show. That's what's really bothersome to me. Kim: So, after you left New Orleans, but before the show started airing, in those couple of months, did you guys talk about what the show would be about? Melissa: Well, we got to see a screening of the casting special and the first episode. And you would think from the casting special, they would take that personality and put it all over the TV. Kim: Yeah, they totally don't. Melissa: Well, from the casting special, you don't know Danny is gay. You didn't know Jamie might have been a really nice person. You thought I was funny as hell. And then I didn't come with funny! So, we saw the casting special, and we were all psyched! Except Jamie. Jamie didn't even go to the wrap party. There were times that I sat down the casting director and cried for Jamie. I was like, "That's really fucked up because he's really a good person. How could you take one percent of his life and put it on there?" And I think that was because Jamie was a businessman as a whole, and a big part of his life was developing Soulgear, and they really thought that Jamie was using MTV as a promotional vehicle for his company. And I think that some bad blood was exchanged there, and maybe that's why he's getting it up the ass. There are a few incidences where you see Jamie doing a stupid little dance, where you get to know the real Jamie. Kim: It seems so out of context. It doesn't seem like something he would do, when you're saying actually, that's really what he's like most of the time. Melissa: All the time. I mean that boy is sick in the head. He's retarded. He's like a disbanded frat boy, like a fraternity couldn't handle him. [laughs] So, it just blew my mind when I saw [the casting special]. I remember during press week, I took Drew [the producer] aside and I was like, "You know what? You can make me an asshole. You can make me a jackass, because I was honest with you and I gave you everything. But don't do that to Jamie -- Jamie really is a good guy!" And it turned into this two-hour confrontation where I'm bawling for Jamie. And Jamie's just like, "Melissa, let it go. It's not going to work. Let it go, it doesn't matter." And I remember a part of me just died. I've never seen Jamie sad before. It was killing me. Kim: Yeah. I remember reading after the casting special, where he said that he wasn't gonna watch the show. Melissa: And people don't understand that he doesn't watch the show, but he does the Challenge? But see, Jamie got his attorneys involved, and Jamie is a businessman, number one. The challenge is a game show with extreme sports in mind. Jamie's company is about extreme sports. Why not parlay that into, "Hey, maybe I can give my roommates some Soulgear stuff and it'd be cool." And they were like, "Okay!" Kim: And I think the Challenges have been an opportunity to -- I don't want to say redeem themselves? But maybe just to show that they're not all the way they were portrayed on their season. Melissa: Yeah, Jamie -- I don't blame him. What you see of me is accurate, maybe not chronology wise, but it's accurate. I said those things. I was fired up, and I was upset. When I'm angry, that is the Melissa I know. When I'm happy, which they'll reveal on The Real World You Never Saw -- I saw that tape. And it's like the me that I know. Kim: Yeah, that comes out soon, doesn't it? Any scoop on The Real World You Never Saw? Melissa: Oh my God. Jamie and I used to spend a day together, and we would make up stupid games. He would say, "Well, today, we can only communicate in opera." And I'd be like, "Okay." So, it would be like, [singing] "Jamie, pass me the oven mitt." The sound girl would be so annoyed. She'd be looking at us like, "What the hell are you guys doing?" I mean, there were days where Jamie was like -- those fish in that tank, they died. Jamie dunked the dead fish out with chopsticks and threw them on me. And like all the times I told stories about my parents -- that's on there. My parents in the hot tub asking Julie to get naked -- that's on there. Kim: I have a question about the money. I know you guys get money for being on the show. Do you get a weekly stipend, or a lump sum at the end, or both? Melissa: Okay, well that's a good way to bring up the NOA-TV. Nobody fucking gets paid for public access. We had this job, and I knew that I had signed a contract that said I would get X amount of dollars per week -- it was about $250 a week. But when I got the check, the check said NOA-TV. I went to the bank, I deposited a check, and I was like, "Okay, I want to use this money tomorrow." And [the teller's] like, "Okay, well this check clears through California." Duh! BMP's in California. So, I'm gonna get paid regardless of whether or not I do that job, which was bullshit, which was contrived conflict. And Elton was a fucking actor. [laughs] What people don't understand is, you still have your credit card [bills]. We had to pay long distance, food, transportation, clothing, gas. I thought Elton was an actor, and I told the director every time, "I'm not going there because he's mean to me because that's part of the TV show." Kim: You think he was paid to be the hard-ass? Melissa: He totally was paid to be a hard-ass, because they didn't want Calvin from Hawaii again. Julie did so well on her show. Her show was just an absolute wonderful production. Uh, we didn't see any praise from Elton. Kim: There was one shot of him in the control room, like "Whoo!" and that was it. Melissa: And that might not even have been him reacting to our show. Kim: Right, that's true. Melissa: Any time Elton came in, I'd be like, "Oh God, go back to General Hospital." I'd see him out in bars, and he'd be so cool! I'm like, "What's up El-dawg!" You know? And then at work, he's like, "Well, I really don't like the project." We were like, "Shut up, dude! We just saw you at House of Blues last night!" And I know that I've complained so much about the job that I look like I have no work ethic. But I kicked ass on my show. I was a bossy-ass bitch on my show. I was like, "Y'all need to be there at 12:00, and if you ain't..." I let my roommates have a say. They were like, "Well, we don't think that's going to work." And I was like, "Okay, cool. As long as you can pull this off by 7:00. We have thirty minutes to pull this thing off the ground, and I'm not trying to get yelled at by Elton, so let's just put a show together." Nobody was watching our show. People in the community were coming up to me, like, "Your show's asshole." And I was like, "Okay." [laughs] We went into it with all this serious shit. And me and Julie were like, "That's dumb, we don't know anything about that." And so when Julie's like, "Our show sucks!" she was being for real. That first show, they edited it together like it was so bomb-daddy. That first show was a fucking labor of love, and it sucked asshole. Kim: Yeah! Because if they want tension on the show, and obviously, they want tension, a lot of the tension comes from the fact that you're on camera, and you know you're on camera. And sometimes you want to say or do things, and then you think, "Oh shit. I'm on camera. I can't." Melissa: Well, the nervous breakdown episode? That episode kind of didn't make sense because I spoke about my father's alcoholism in the abstract because I didn't want them to exploit his problem on national television. I was best friends with my dad at this point in my life, and I had worked very hard to get it that way. When I'm on the phone with my sister, I didn't know that little camera by the phone picked up the whole room. That's why I've got my head down and I'm like, "I just don't want Daddy to know." Because there was no cameraman. No actual person holding a camera came out at that point. So, I thought that I was safe. So, when I say, "I just don't want Daddy to know." Well, duh! He's gonna know now! You know? I was like, "Holy shit, that makes me look so stupid because now it's on national television, and Daddy sure does know." Even if I went to a pay phone -- that time I went to the pay phone in the beginning, I was dealing with it then. They filmed me on the pay phone. And then when I'm walking away, talking to myself? I didn't know they were filming anymore. They got in the van, and I thought it was over, and I'm talking to myself. It was just horrible. Kim: So, was there anywhere that you could go that the cameras weren't allowed? Melissa: Yeah, but there's a clause in your contract also that if the cameras are not allowed to film inside that place, you cannot go in. Kim: Huh. But people have done it. Like I know Lindsay in Seattle did. There was that hotel door, the cameras weren't allowed in there, and she said she used to go in there all the time and just, like, read a book. Unless maybe the clause was added after that, because it was so bad. Melissa: Well, so many of [the clauses] were probably made after David in Seattle, since he was rambunctious. [laughs] You start to learn the process. Like if Paul was coming over to see Danny, and say, Julie's dad was coming [at the same time]? Child, I was not in that house. I would take my microphone off, hide it in my comforter really, really well, and run down the street, call my friend and be like, "Yo, pick me up on the corner of 3rd and 26th, NOW." Kim: So, if you want to take your comforters instead of letting them auction them off? Melissa: Oh, no comforter-taking. Julie wanted her comforter so bad, and we were like, "I am not paying for that." [The producers] knew it too. I had stolen these measuring cups. Like, just measuring cups, God! And somebody came up to me, like, "We know you have the cups." And I'm like, "What?" And they're like, "You know, there's cameras everywhere." And I'm like, "No, I don't! I have no idea what you're talking about." Kim: They're like, "Don't make us bring out the tape." [laughs] Melissa: It's amazing, because at the end of the show, you get to go back and break into the production room, which might be on The Real World You Never Saw. And it's just straight up FBI back there. I mean, they had cameras rigged in places like -- Jamie didn't really like to do his business calls with his attorneys in the house, because that was confidential, so he'd go to this coffee shop. There was a camera rigged, in the coffee shop, okay? We think they were just kidding, but who knows? We think they were just kidding.