‘The Real World: San Francisco’ Was Looking for an HIV Positive Cast Member Before Pedro Zamora Wrote to Them
The reality TV sensation The Real World was only in its third season on MTV when it introduced the world to Pedro Zamora. Zamora joined the house in San Francisco and died shortly after the season aired in 1994. Real World co-creator John Murray remembers how he wanted to tell a story about HIV and Zamora serendipitously reached out to the show.
Murray was a guest on the Basic! Podcast on Nov. 9. Looking back on the early seasons of The Real World, Murray reflected on how important the casting of Zamora was.
‘The Real World’ had to include an HIV positive castmate in San Francisco
The gay community in San Francisco was reckoning with HIV and AIDS through the ‘80s and ‘90s. After seasons in New York and Los Angeles, The Real World set season 3 in San Francisco. Murray wanted to include the relevant social issues amongst the cast.
“Yes, when we went to San Francisco in season 3, we wanted to find someone who was HIV positive to be part of the cast because in San Francisco in 1993 to avoid that story would have been totally false,” Murray said on Basic! “That story was part of what was going on in that city and other big cities in America.”
Pedro Zamora wrote ‘The Real World’ a letter
It turned out The Real World didn’t have to find someone to tell this story. Zamora came to them.
“It happened that Pedro sent us a letter from Miami,” Murray said. “We had someone looking in San Francisco for someone who was HIV positive but Pedro came in through Miami. That’s how he ended up on the show.”
Pedro Zamora touched the world
If you were around in the ‘90s, even if you never watched MTV you heard about Zamora. And MTV viewers who did watch The Real World: San Francisco went on a journey with him. Murray heard from national leaders about how important the season was.
“No one was talking about that,” Murray said. “There’d been An Early Frost, a TV movie with Aidan Quinn. There’d been a few things but nothing that would reach young people the way having Pedro on The Real World did. As President Clinton said, Pedro being on The Real World did loads more than anything his administration could’ve done to educate people about HIV/AIDS and to create a more compassionate world for people with HIV/AIDS.”
The Real World: Los Angeles ended up portraying an abortion story, but producers were not aware of the potential for that when they cast Tami.
“When we cast Tami Akbar in season 2, we didn’t know she was pregnant,” Murray said. “She didn’t know she was pregnant at the time. That’s the cool thing about reality is that you cast these people and then you go where the story takes you.”
