Dill’s blurred-out face in his several appearances became an enduring symbol of the injustice of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” as well as the liminal space gay people occupied. The couple took the risk of going before MTV’s cameras not in protest of the policy, but because they couldn’t bear to be apart. Dill could have lost his job if he had been revealed. people to serve in the military under the condition that they stayed in the closet, and Mr. These were the days of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” the Bill Clinton-era policy that allowed L.G.B.T.Q. His boyfriend during the filming of “The Real World: New Orleans,” an Army officer named Paul Dill, appeared on the show using only his first name, and his face was hidden to conceal his identity. Roberts was, at the outset, not particularly motivated by activism. And for gay adolescents in a time before social media, who relied on television for glimpses of fellow travelers, the sight of him bopping around the “Real World” digs in his black boxer briefs was both an awakening and an indication of new possibilities. Yes, he was sex on a stick (with a soul patch). Rather than playing a jester, villain or de-eroticized Ken doll, he was chill, joyful in his identity, and he seemed to glow with an unapologetic sex appeal.
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Roberts, born and raised in small-town Rockmart, Ga., was something different from his TV predecessors. Zamora’s impact was complicated by deep sadness. people since its 1992 debut - most notably Pedro Zamora, a young activist from the third season, who died of AIDS-related illness a day after the finale - but Mr. But he was a rather dark, Machiavellian figure. “Will & Grace,” another sitcom, broke some ground by chronicling the relationship between a gay man and his straight friend, but discerning viewers couldn’t help but notice that it had about as much bite as “I Love Lucy.” In 2000, “Survivor,” then in its first season, delivered an openly gay (and, often, openly nude) antihero in Richard Hatch, who schemed his way to million-dollar victory. But her sitcom, “Ellen,” was canceled one season after her revelation. Ellen DeGeneres’s coming out in 1997 created a sense that things were changing. visibility was going through an awkward phase in that time. Roberts, then 22, exuded with every flash of his Mona Lisa-meets-Backstreet Boy smile. Gay people, at the time, were becoming more visible on TV - thanks, in large part, to earlier installments of “The Real World” - but none had the wholesomeness and confident sexuality that Mr. Roberts was something new in pop culture: a gay sex symbol zapped into the basement rec rooms of teenagers who had never encountered such a creature. But for a swath of gay elder millennials whose formative years unfolded to an MTV soundtrack, his reappearance as a cast member on a streaming return to “The Real World” on Paramount+ is likely to spark that old zig-a-zig-ah. If you’re not a member of the microgeneration able to bust out the chorus to the Spice Girls hit “Wannabe” from memory, there’s a good chance you have no idea who Mr.
Roberts learned that the TV version of himself had become a shadow that traveled with him. When he and his fellow players left “The Real World” for the real world, the stumbling continued, and Mr. The phrase “reality TV” was just becoming part of the everyday lexicon when he found himself jammed into a house in New Orleans with six other young people who - with the help of a few narrative contrivances - were taking their first stumbles into adulthood.
Now, at 44, he’s doing it again, for reasons he can only half-explain. When he first put himself out there, in the ninth season of “The Real World,” he was young and a bit naïve. “We don’t talk about the reality TV thing.” “It’s kind of the elephant in the room with my family,” he said. His mother, who was visiting for the week, was watching her. His eyes are crinkly now his sandy hair seems uncertain of its next move. This was where, on a recent day, Danny Roberts was standing in the doorway of the tiny cabin in the woods where he lives with his 6-year-old daughter. Make it to Grafton (population: 645), and your cell service largely evaporates. When you cross into Vermont from New York, the road opens up and the Green Mountains emerge.