‘Real World’ casting call set for Burbank

Some people can remember when MTV ran primarily music videos. Some also remember the first season of “The Real World,” one of the cable network’s early regularly scheduled entertainment programs.

Those people need not apply to be one of the “lucky seven” youngsters featured in the show’s upcoming 31st season — the show’s production company will be in Burbank Saturday seeking people 21 or older by October 2015 and who can pass for 20- to 24-year-olds.

The show first aired 23 years ago and brought seven Gen-Xers together to live in a tricked-out pad in a hybrid documentary-slash-soap-opera format, now a reality TV convention.

Twenty-somethings who are opinionated, outgoing and willing to share their life with “the world” might want to get their head shots ready and be at the Hooters in Burbank, located at 600 N. First St., Saturday for the casting call that will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“We look for characters from real life — people with strong personalities who are unafraid to speak their minds,” said Jonathan Murray, the show’s executive producer, in a statement.

That means “not just an average Joe,” said Holland Weathers, a casting director with Bunim/Murray Productions, which produces the series. “Average Joe,” notably, was a different reality TV show.

“Obviously a big personality has a lot to do with it,” Weathers said. “We look for different unique stories.”

The stories they look for are those that will resonate with college kids who she said are going through transitional periods in their life and “trying to learn who they are.”

Weathers said aspiring cast members should bring photo ID and a recent photo that shows them how they really are — “not a glamour shot.” They will be asked to fill out an application at the casting call and should be prepared to wait in line, perhaps for hours, before being seen in small groups of eight to 10 people , where they’ll be expected to show their outspoken side.

“It’s not the time to be shy,” she said.

The casting call is not filmed for air, she said. Callbacks and additional interviews will be scheduled for next week and the show’s producers will have the ultimate responsibility for culling hundreds of applicants to be the seven strangers who’ll live together in a yet-to-be-announced location.

In its long run, the show has been known for its unreality, beginning with the first season in 1992, which put cast members up in a snazzy loft in New York’s SoHo neighborhood rent-free and sent the three women on the cast to Jamaica on an all-expenses-paid visit to a resort called Hedonism II.

The drama and fireworks created by putting the seven diverse cast members in close quarters also became a hallmark of reality TV, while also highlighting important social issues, such as in the third season, when the cast featured Pedro Zamorah, who was struggling with AIDS.

That was also the season featuring the infamous bike messenger David “Puck” Rainey, whose insensitivity toward Zamorah got him booted from the house.

For the upcoming season, the producers are casting in cities across the country this summer with stops in Charlotte, Boston, Philadelphia, Oklahoma City, Kansas City and Miami Beach, among others.

Weathers said that one reason the show chose to cast in Burbank is for the diversity of people in the area. In the South, producers find Southerners, in New York, New Yorkers — but the Burbank area is “a melting pot of people.”

“You can find all those people in one place,” she said.