‘The Real World: Philadelphia’ started filming in Old City on this week in Philly history

Oh, it got real.

The seminal MTV reality television show The Real World started filming its 15th season on April 30, 2004, in Philadelphia. The network would air the first installment of its 26-episode season that fall.

The cast of seven strangers resided at the Corn Exchange National Bank building at Third and Arch Streets in Old City. (Which originally housed a bank but has seen a variety of occupants over the years and is now looking for a new tenant.)

And it didn’t take long for Philly to get involved.

There were fights at bars, strange and hostile crowds, and drama.

So much drama.

And it began before the show started filming. The network contracted nonunion workers to renovate the house, which caused a kerfuffle and threatened the taping. It took an intervention from then-Gov. Ed Rendell to help smooth it over.

Philly essentially became another cast member but didn’t really go out of its way to make the others feel welcome. And the cameras didn’t help.

During the more than three months of filming, police interrogated the cast’s only gay Black man over a nonexistent weapon concern. Then someone threw a chair at a cast member in a bar. And at one point the group was so tired of going out and getting hassled (especially in Old City), according to Billy Penn, that they stayed home for a stretch and played board games until being prodded by producers.

It was a landmark show in TV history for casting two gay men — future Queer Eye host Karamo Brown and William Hernandez. In the early aughts, featuring an openly gay Black man seemed both scandalous and revelatory.

The cast eventually found a better reception going out in the Gayborhood and Northern Liberties.

The other cast members — Shavonda Bilingslea, Sarah Burke, M.J. Garrett, Landon Lueck, and Melanie Silcott — also found more welcoming bars in neighborhoods like Manayunk.

And the group seemed to most enjoy Jim’s Steaks, which is a topic for another column.

In a 2015 retrospective at Billy Penn, several cast members said they ultimately looked back at their time in Philly in a positive light, despite the city’s best efforts.

And by then, both the cast members and the city had grown up.