The Real World

Today’s interview is a true story of a twenty-something woman, picked to live in a house with 6 strangers and have her life taped. Listen in to find out what happened when she stopped being polite and started getting real. You know I had to open with that, right? I HAD to. I am thankful that my adolescence and young adulthood happened BEFORE social media. That the dumb things I did were not preserved for all eternity on someone’s phone or story or timeline much less broadcast to millions on cable tv. For Melissa, Y2k was the year, she broadcast 6 months of her life in the ninth season of The Real World New Orleans. And, what seemed like a good time and an easy way out of her hometown of Valrico, Florida, ended up taking her beyond what she had imagined. Her reality TV debut turned into a brief stint in Hollywood chasing commercial roles, auditions, and a full time job on Chelsea Handler’s show Girls Behaving Badly. Then, one day, after some soul searching, she decided she’d had enough of Hollywood and moved to Long Island, New York to live with her then boyfriend, Justin. In 2007 Melissa and Justin married and, in early 2009 she gave birth to their first child, a daughter. It was then when she realized that being a mom? This was the gig she was meant to land.