GRAFTON, Vt. – When you enter Vermont from New York, the road opens up and the Green Mountains appear. Make it to Grafton (population: 645) and your cell service largely evaporates. This was where, on a recent day, Danny Roberts stood in the doorway of the little cabin in the woods where he lives with his 6-year-old daughter. His eyes are now wrinkled; his gritty hair seems unsure of the next move. He has grown into a beard.
His daughter was away for the day, Mr. Roberts said. His mother, who had been visiting for a week, kept an eye on her.
“It’s kind of the elephant in the room with my family,” he said. “We’re not talking about the reality TV thing.”
When he first marketed himself, on the ninth season of “The Real World,” he was young and a little naive. Now, at age 44, he’s doing it again, for reasons he can only half explain.
The phrase “reality TV” just became part of the everyday lexicon when he found himself trapped in a New Orleans house with six other young people who — with the help of a few narrative inventions — were making their first stumbling block to adulthood.
When he and his fellow players left “The Real World” for the real world, the stumbling continued, and Mr. Roberts discovered that the TV version of himself had become a shadow that traveled with him. Danny Roberts meant something to people.
If you’re not part of the microgeneration that can memorize the chorus of the Spice Girls hit “Wannabe,” chances are you have no idea who Mr. Roberts is. But for a slew of gay older millennials whose formative years unfolded into an MTV soundtrack, his return as a cast member on a streaming return to “The Real World” on Paramount+ is likely to rekindle those old ones. zig-a-zig-ah.
In 2000 mr. Roberts did something new in pop culture: a gay sex symbol zapped into the basements of teenagers who had never met such a creature. Gays were becoming increasingly visible on TV at the time — thanks in large part to past episodes of “The Real World” — but none had the wholesomeness and confident sexuality that Mr. Roberts, then 22, radiated from his Mona Lisa-meets-Backstreet Boy with every flash. -smile.
The LGBTQ visibility project was going through a difficult phase at the time. Ellen DeGeneres’ coming out in 1997 aroused the sense that things were changing. But her sitcom, “Ellen,” was canceled a season after its unveiling.
“Will & Grace,” another sitcom, broke some ground by describing the relationship between a gay man and his straight boyfriend, but critical viewers couldn’t help but have about as much bite as “I Love Lucy.” In 2000, then in its first season, “Survivor” delivered an openly gay (and often openly naked) antihero in Richard Hatch, plotting his way to a million-dollar victory. But he was a rather dark, Machiavellian figure.
“The Real World” has featured LGBTQ people since its 1992 debut — most notably Pedro Zamora, a young activist from the third season, who died of an AIDS-related illness a day after the finale — but Mr. . Zamora was complicated by deep sadness .
mr. Born and raised in the small town of Rockmart, Georgia, Roberts was a little different from his TV predecessors. Rather than playing a jester, villain, or de-erotic Ken doll, he was cold, merry in his identity, and seemed to glow with unabashed sex appeal.
Yes, he was sex on a stick (with a soul slap). And for gay adolescents in a pre-social media era, who relied on television to catch a glimpse of fellow travelers, the sight of him drifting through the “real world” in his black boxers in his black boxers was both an awakening and an indication of new possibilities.
Unlike Mr. Zamora was Mr. Roberts wasn’t exactly motivated by activism in the beginning. His friend during the filming of “The Real World: New Orleans”, an army officer named Paul Dill, appeared on the show using only his first name and his face was hidden to hide his identity. These were the days of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” the Bill Clinton-era policy that allowed LGBTQ people to serve in the military on the condition that they stay in the closet, and Mr. Dill had his job when he was revealed.
The couple took the risk of going in front of MTV’s cameras, not in protest at the policy, but because they couldn’t bear to be apart. Mr. Dill’s blurry face throughout his various appearances became an enduring symbol of the injustice of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” as well as the liminal space gays occupied.
“I really didn’t know what ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ was,” said Mr. Roberts. “I didn’t know the consequences. We should have at least changed his name.”
The decision would have consequences. After exposing himself to the cameras, Mr. Roberts returned to everyday life only to be forced back into a new kind of closet while trying to continue the relationship.
“Every day we lived with fear,” he recalls. “His career is being destroyed. From being dishonorably discharged. And I had my own fear. He was stationed in North Carolina, so we’re in the south, and every kid there knew who I was.”
“You know, Matthew Shepard was just a few years before that,” he continued, referring to the gay college student who was kidnapped and murdered in Wyoming in 1998. “You keep repeating in your head: I’m going to be gay – slammed into the parking lot to get my groceries.”
After breaking up with Mr. Dill in 2006, Mr. Roberts settled into a life that seemed to reflect the increasing mundanity of gay men in America. He became a recruiter in the tech industry. He married, adopted his daughter and divorced. (“I don’t recommend marriage,” he said.) In 2018, he announced that he had HIV since 2011. He moved to Vermont.
Then, like an old flame, “The Real World” came calling. Mr Roberts said he found it difficult to resist the salary and the possibility of closing. “It was a nostalgic thing,” he said. “He returns to the scene of the crime.”
This time he is more aware of how his presence on TV can bring about change. “To me personally, all the progress LGBTQ people have made over the past 20 feels very weak right now,” he said. “This is an opportunity to remind people how things were then and that we don’t want to go back there.”
The new show, “The Real World Homecoming: New Orleans,” doesn’t quite let go of the reality TV conventions it helped pioneer. In one episode, a drunken cast member tumbles out of an SUV and plants his face on the sidewalk.
But when the seven old roommates return to their New Orleans abode, they carry the middle-aged baggage with them. mr. Dill appears in a poignant scene in the show’s third episode, coming face-to-face with Mr. Roberts. His face is now fully visible.
As Mr. Roberts strolled the grounds of his rural property on a gray spring day, his younger self’s easygoing charisma revealed itself. Since 2020, he sees a farmer who lives one city away. (They met through the dating app Scruff.) “He had no idea I’d been on TV,” he said. “I don’t think he grew up with cable.”
This time there is nothing to hide. But some habits persist: Mr. Roberts refused to share the farmer’s name.
And while he has mixed feelings about the path “The Real World” has taken him, the experience was just as important to him as it was to his fans all those years ago.
“I think a lot of people who are marginal, especially homosexuals, especially from that era, felt invisible,” he said. “It’s this deep hole of emptiness. Doing that show was the most exciting, beautiful part of my life at the time. For the first time I tasted what confirmation feels like.”