| Season Number: | 5 |
| Num Episodes: | 22 |
| Network: | MTV |
| Prev Season: | The Real World: London |
| Next Season: | The Real World: Boston |
The Real World: Miami is the fifth season of MTV's reality television series The Real World, which focuses on a group of diverse strangers living together for several months in a different city each season, as cameras follow their lives and interpersonal relationships. It is the first season of The Real World to be filmed in the South Atlantic States region of the United States, specifically in Florida.
The season featured seven people who lived in a house on Rivo Alto Island and was the first season filmed in the United States outside of New York and California. Production for the season started from February to July 1996. The season premiered on July 10 of that year, consisted of 22 episodes.[1] This is the first of two seasons filmed in Florida. Ten years later, the show set its seventeenth season, returning to the state in the Key Haven neighborhood of Key West.
This was the first season in which the housemates were given a season-long assignment or task, an aspect of the series that would continue in almost all subsequent seasons; the Brooklyn and D.C. seasons dispensed with it. This season the cast was given $50,000 startup money to begin a business of their choosing. The cast's efforts were marked by much disorganization and conflict, and while ideas such as a dessert delivery service and a fashion line were floated about, they were ultimately not able to start the business.
The house is located at 445 E Rivo Alto Dr, in Miami Beach, just north of the Venetian Causeway on affluent Rivo Alto Island. The four bedroom, three bathroom house is on NaNacres of land, and is 4976square feet. Its current owner is former Ford CEO Jacques Nasser.[2]
| Cast Member | Age | Hometown | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sarah Becker[3] | 25[4] | San Diego, California[5] | |
| Sarah is a graduate of Indiana University who works at Wildstorm Comics in La Jolla, California. A self-described "19-year-old trapped in a 25-year-old body", whom MTV describes as a "tomboy", Sarah enjoys skateboarding, collect empty Blistex tubes and Swatch watches, and dressing up as television characters. In Episode 13, she brings home a puppy named Leroy.[6] | |||
| Dan Renzi | 21[7] | Overland Park, Kansas[8] | |
| Dan, who is originally from Kansas,[9] [10] is an openly gay student at Rutgers University, where he has been editor of the student paper for two years. His interests include world economics, LGBT rights and environmental studies. In Miami, he begins a modeling career with Irene Marie Models. He also begins dating a man named Arnie who is still in the closet, though he later begins dating another man named Johnny.[11] During the season, he gets into heated arguments with Melissa[12] and Flora.[13] By the end of the season, he moves to Milan to pursue his modeling career. | |||
| Melissa Padrón | 22[14] | Miami, Florida | |
| Melissa is a Miami native from a traditional Cuban-American family, who is about to graduate from the University of Miami. In Episode 12, she and Dan get into a fight, during which she calls him a "flamer", after Dan excoriates her for opening his mail, which according to him, could have cost him his job, though they later reconcile. In Episode 20, following an argument with Sarah, Melissa moves out of the house but remains part of the show and the cast's assignment.[15] | |||
| Joe Patane[16] | 25[17] | Brooklyn, New York | |
| Joe is an Italian-American graduate business student at Fordham University in New York City. He owns a small business, Computane Corp, and is eager to start the business with his housemates. He has a tall girlfriend named Nicole, but he indicates he has difficulty remaining faithful to her, and when she visits the house, some of the other housemates, notably Cynthia, express incredulity at their relationship, and an aversion to her.[18] Nonetheless, he proposes to her by the end of the season. | |||
| Cynthia Roberts | 22[19] | Oakland, California | |
| Cynthia, who is originally from Atlanta, Georgia, is an African-American waitress who attends San Jose State University. Her father died some years ago, but she is still close with her mother and sisters. MTV describes her as a "straightforward" person who does not like to kiss on the first date. At the conclusion of the season she accepts a job offer in Miami. | |||
| Flora Alekseyeun[20] | 24[21] | Boston, Massachusetts | |
| Flora of Russian ethnicity, won several national marketing competitions while attending the Art Institute of Boston. During the season, she carries on an affair with a man named Louis, without the knowledge of her boyfriend, Mitchell. MTV describes her as an "uninhibited" woman who doesn't care what others think. She describes herself as both "a carefree spirit", and at times, a "bitch". In the premiere, she takes a job as a bartender, though Cynthia openly criticizes her for dressing provocatively in her job interview. In Episode 18, she gets into a fight with Dan, after Mike tells her that Dan related to him statements by her that Mitchell beat her, and says that Mitchell is very good to her. | |||
| Mike Lambert | 24[22] | Jacksonville, Florida | |
| Mike has a strong background in accounting and restaurant management, which he is hoping to put to use for the group's business project. He also enjoys partying, and in Episode 17, after sharing time in the hot tub with Melissa another woman he brought home, the trio move to the bathroom, where the other housemates eavesdropping outside the window hear what sound like the lovemaking, though Mike and Melissa deny any shared encounter.[23] | |||
| Episodes | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | |
| Cynthia | colspan="22" | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Dan | colspan="22" | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Flora | colspan="22" | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Joe | colspan="22" | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Mike | colspan="22" | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Sarah | colspan="22" | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Melissa | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Notes
In 1998, Joe Patane published his memoirs about his experiences on the show, Livin' in Joe's World: Unauthorized, Uncut, and Unreal: The Memoirs of Joe Patane from the Miami Cast of MTV's The Real World.[16]
During The Real World Reunion 2000, the first reunion show that involved the Miami cast, Flora revealed that she and Mitchell got married. Joe revealed that he and Nicole broke up, to which Mike expressed relief, because, as he told Joe, Nicole was a "bitch".[24]
At the 2008 The Real World Awards Bash, Dan received a nomination for "Best Meltdown" because of his fight with Melissa, while Flora received one in the "Best Phonecall Gone Bad" category.[25] [26]
Flora Alekseyeun appeared nude in the May 2002 issue of Playboy magazine, along with other alumnae of The Real World and Road Rules: Beth Stolarczyk, Veronica Portillo and Jisela Delgado.[27] [28] [29] In 2020, she appeared on E! reality series Botched.[30]
Cynthia Roberts appeared in "Floating Deck", a 2008 episode of the DIY Network show Yard Crashers, which depicted the renovation of her back yard.[31]
After a career in runway and print fashion modeling, Dan Renzi became a model scout for a Chicago agency, a field researcher with the Los Angeles Department of Epidemiology and director of AIDS/HIV program at the Kansas City Gay and Lesbian Center. He has made appearances at celebrity Spring Break parties in the Bahamas.[32] He has also contributed to the New York Post and the Miami New Times, and chronicles all his adventures at his own blog, How Was Your Day, Dan?[33] He later became a registered nurse based in his home state of Kansas, and worked on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City.[34]
After leaving WildStorm Productions, Sarah Becker worked for Disney Publishing.[35] In June 2024, she committed suicide at her Illinois home at age 52. She had had recently moved there from California to take care of ill family members. She had reportedly "struggled with mental health in recent months" and a recent skateboarding accident exacerbated the problems she was dealing with.[36] [37] Colleagues who offered public tributes to her included DC Comics Publisher Jim Lee, who had hired her at WildStorm Productions when he was the owner of that studio,[35] and artist J. Scott Campbell, who worked with her during their early days at WildStorm, having once drawn Becker as a character in a scene in an WildStorm comic.[38]
| Sarah Becker | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Dan Renzi | Extreme Challenge, Battle of the Sexes, The Inferno II | ||
| Melissa Padrón | |||
| Joe Patane | |||
| Cynthia Roberts | , Battle of the Sexes 2 | The Challenge: All Stars (season 3) | |
| Flora Alekseyeun | Battle of the Seasons (2002) | The Challenge: All Stars (season 4) | |
| Mike Lambert | Challenge 2000, Battle of the Seasons (2002) |