After being named Playboy’s Playmate of the Year, Jenny McCarthy was cast as one of the hosts of MTV’s dating show Singled Out alongside Chris Hardwick. For more young stars’ small-screen evolutions, check out The Biggest Disney Channel Stars, Then and Now. In 2020, McCarthy is still immersed in reality (or surreality?) TV as one of the judges of The Masked Singer. She’s married to New Kid on the Block Donnie Wahlberg and has been criticized for her controversial stance on vaccinating children. Standup comic Bob Saget had been playing single dad Danny Tanner on Full House for a couple of seasons already when he took on another job: hosting America’s Funniest Home Videos, the show that gave regular people the chance to win cash with footage of painful home accidents. For shows that have aged faster than you thought, check out 30 Beloved TV Shows You Won’t Believe Are 30 Years Old. Saget reprised his sitcom role for the Full House Netflix revival series, Fuller House, whose final season premiered this summer. In 2020, he also launched a new podcast called Bob Saget’s Here for You. An actor, host, and commentator, Roger Lodge was the emcee of the addictive dating reality show Blind Date. For stars who made the most out of the reality game, check out The 30 Most Successful Reality TV Personalities of the Last 30 Years. These days, Lodge primarily uses his recognizable voice to talk sports. He’s the host of The Sports Lodge on AM830 in Los Angeles, bringing “his unbridled energy and passion for the Los Angeles Angels and all Southern California sports to the afternoon broadcast,” according to the official site.ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb Tami Roman was one of the roommates on the second season of MTV’s The Real World. You may remember her best for the incident in which another of the Los Angeles cast members, David Edwards, tried to pull bedding off of her while she was in her underwear, which he claimed was a joke. Roman has acted and also continued to build a career in reality TV. Most notably, she was one of the longest-serving members of VH1’s Basketball Wives. She also has an Instagram series called The Bonnet Chronicles, which she created. The Real World: San Francisco, AKA Season 3 of the groundbreaking MTV reality show, may be the one most ’90s kids remember best, thanks to cast members like the late Pedro Zamora, the show’s first roommate living with AIDS, and bike messenger David “Puck” Rainey, who got himself kicked out of the house. Meanwhile, though their relationship didn’t become romantic in the house, med student Pam Ling and cartoonist Judd Winick later shared with fans that they’d fallen in love. For more nostalgia sent right to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter. The Real World alumi have been married for 19 years and have two children. Winick is an established comic book artist and writer, while Ling is an internist at University of California San Francisco Health. Dave Holmes famously came in second to Jesse Camp on MTV’s Wanna Be a VJ contest. Despite not taking the crown, he became a fixture on the network, hosting Say What? Karaoke and 120 Minutes, among other shows. These days, Holmes is an editor-at-large at Esquire, has written a memoir, and hosts a show on the SiriusXM channel The Spectrum. Ever since 1996, Judge Judy’s own Judge Judy Sheindlin has had daytime audiences enraptured by her epic eye rolls and sarcastic take downs as she presides over real small claims court cases. Judge Judy is still on the air. In March of this year, Sheindlin announced that this 25th season will be the last, but she’ll be back with a new courtroom show called Judy Justice almost immediately after. According to Variety, the format will be familiar to Judge Judy fans, but the show will likely go to a streaming service, not a network. In 2019, she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Daytime Emmys. While Judge Joe Brown didn’t have the staying power of Judge Judy, its 1998-2013 run isn’t anything to sneeze at. Joe Brown hasn’t been in the spotlight much for the last few years. In 2014, he lost the general election for district attorney of Shelby County, Tennessee, and in 2015, he spent five days in jail after being charged with contempt of court after a courtroom argument allegedly got heated. Jacinda Barrett, an Australian aspiring actor and model, appeared on the first Real World season filmed abroad, The Real World: London. Barrett successfully launched a Hollywood career after leaving the Real World flat. Her most recent TV role was that of Diana Rayburn, the wife of Kyle Chandler’s character, on the Netflix family drama Bloodline. She’s been married to Suits star Gabriel Macht for 14 years, and the couple has two children. Irene McGee didn’t finish out the season when she was on The Real World: Seattle, and she was notoriously slapped by another roommate, Stephen Williams, while she was literally in the car that would take her away from the house. She’s since spoken out about why she left the show, calling the environment “toxic” and full of manipulation in a piece for Vulture. McGee has continued to shed light on her experience with reality TV in various ways, including through a one-woman show. She also has a YouTube channel and is involved with organizations that raise funds and awareness of Lyme Disease, which she revealed on the show that she was diagnosed with. Teck Holmes was one of the most charismatic and ambitious housemates on The Real World: Hawaii, which says a lot for a season that kicked off with three cast members skinny-dipping. Holmes is an actor and producer with an active social media presence. His standout post-Real World role is still 2002’s Van Wilder, where he acted opposite Ryan Reynolds. Mark Long and Kit Hoover were the will-they-won’t-they couple of the first season of Road Rules (basically, “what if The Real World was in a camper van?”), which premiered on MTV in 1995. The two former cast members are still friends and work together occasionally. Hoover began a broadcast career after Road Rules and has been a cohost of Access Live since 2010. Long returned to MTV for several iterations of The Challenge, the physical competition show that pits former Road Rules and Real World cast members against each other. He dropped by Access Live in February to reunite with Hoover again earlier in 2020.
