MTV’s hit reality show “The Real World” is coming to Park Slope – or Red Hook, Gowanus, Carroll Gardens or Cobble Hill.
Those neighborhoods comprise Community Board 6 and that is where the 21st season of the show will be filmed this summer.
“Assuming that they closed on the place that they are talking about, yes, they would be in our community board,” Community Board 6 District Manager Craig Hammerman told this paper.
A rep for MTV would not provide the address – or even the neighborhood – that “seven strangers picked to live in a house and have their lives taped” will call home.
But Jon Murray, co-creator of “The Real World” and chair and president of its production company, offered insight into why Brooklyn was selected as the setting for the reality show, which has already filmed seasons in Hollywood, Denver, Chicago, and Hawaii.
“Brooklyn is a vibrant, diverse community that’s fun to live in and close to Manhattan where a lot of young people pursue careers,” Murray said.
Hammerman said MTV contacted Community Board 6 several weeks ago to see if the downtown area would be a good fit for the drama-filled reality show.
“They reached out because they wanted to get a better sense as to how the neighborhoods kick, who are some of the active groups in the area, where some local hot spots are, what some of the local issues are,” he explained.
In past “Real World” seasons, the seven roommates held court in local restaurants, bars and clubs nightly.
When first approached by MTV, Hammerman expressed concern about the production interrupting day-to-day life in Brooklyn but was assured that filming of the show would have little impact on the community.
“My first question was what they anticipated their equipment and filming needs to be – we want to balance the needs of the industry with the impact on the community,” he said. “They did explain to me that the nature of their show is that a lot of this is filmed indoors and that the outdoor shooting is mostly done with handheld cameras so we’re not talking about blocking down streets, we’re not talking about losing excessive amounts of parking. We’re talking about a fairly low-impact project as it was described.”
“I don’t have cable television so I’ve never seen the show,” Hammerman said. “But anything that attempts to capture a slice of life here in our community district and accurately portray that can’t be anything but flattering.”
