Eli McCann: Our unreal fascination with Utah and LDS reality TV stars

In 1992, MTV premiered a new television program called “The Real World.” In it, producers cast a handful of young adults who didn’t know one another to live in an outrageous mansion together for a few months and drink themselves nearly to death.

For children of the 1990s, these hot young people — hardly older than us — were a televised testament that maybe we too could be trusted to navigate the complexities of adulthood.

The show’s format and early seasons were particularly eye-opening for Utah Latter-day Saint teenagers, what with the partying and scandalous coed living. The unadulterated hedonism intrigued us while also allowing us to dip our toes into disrepute without ourselves becoming disreputable. “The Real World” was disconnected from our real world, filmed off in some distant land involving distant people with distant lives we could hardly understand. It was exciting in the way a lot of fiction is exciting. Aspirational, even if unrelatable.

Then Julie Stoffer showed up.

I was 15 when Julie, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a Brigham Young University student, was cast for Season 9 of “The Real World.” There was a soft MTV ban in my home due to the network’s proclivity, in my parents’ view, to promote general hooliganism. But even they had to confess their own curiosity about a sister in Zion crossing the gritty airwaves of teen impropriety.

It’s hard to explain how scintillating it was to discover a fellow Utah saint on MTV at that time. There had been a small slew of Beehive State celebrities through the years — usually of the Osmond variety — but we had rarely seen our faith and culture examined under such a worldly microscope.

And it wasn’t like this Julie person was a former church member. We’d seen those. We claimed them even while they disavowed us. But there was a limit to how connected we could actually feel to those who tried to hide the connection themselves.

All that talk about BYU

Julie was an active Latter-day Saint, proudly claiming our lovely Deseret. She was a current student of the Lord’s University. BYU wasn’t her alma mater. It was her Alma. I don’t know whether that joke makes sense. I haven’t been to church since Mitt Romney was a presidential candidate.

The point is, my peers and I devoured Julie’s season, salivating over every reference to our faith and state.

“Did you hear them talk about BYU in the last episode?” I remember my friend Tim asking. “They talked about her going to BYU.”

We were embarrassed when Latter-day Saints on television were embarrassing. And we watched with a plea in our hearts that they represent us well. But even when they didn’t, we couldn’t look away.

Evidently deciding that “no press is bad press,” the episode in which Julie’s family visited and judged her fellow cast members over their partying habits and sexual orientation was like having fry sauce pumped into our veins. “Our parents would disown us,” I remember one of Julie’s brothers telling the gay roommate after wondering aloud what would happen if one of his siblings was gay.

One episode featured Julie talking with the BYU Honor Code Office about whether her broadcast turpitude merited expulsion. “She’s just doing missionary work,” my friend Nick argued. “Even Jesus hung out with the prostitutes and marijuana addicts.”

The season ended, but the drama did not. Articles about Julie’s ongoing consternations with BYU drummed up dialogue in our community. There were continued discussions about whether she did our faith a favor as she was suspended from school for living with men on television.

Our very own ‘Survivor’

Julie’s name had barely left our lips when suddenly, in 2002, Neleh Dennis was cast on “Survivor.” Premiering at the turn of the century, “Survivor” was structured around a social strategy game in which contestants were required to compete in challenges, forage for food, and “out-survive” other players.

Utah news outlets covered Neleh’s assent in the contest like it was a presidential race. The coverage was exclusively positive. Neleh was cute. She was folksy. She was charming.

She was ours.

Every time Neleh uttered “oh my heck” it felt like our names were being individually read aloud on prime-time TV.

The neighborhood parents were less horrified by Neleh’s coed living than they had been with Julie’s. Maybe Julie had paved the way for Neleh, or maybe it’s not really living in sin if there’s no roof. Whatever the reason, Neleh was treated differently. She wasn’t a controversy; she was a revered ambassador.

It was reported that Neleh had selected a copy of the Book of Mormon as a personal item to bring with her to the island. One of my Sunday school teachers cut out an article about this and read it to us, citing it as an example of missionary work coming in all shapes and sizes.

“Neleh could have brought Teen Vogue,” Sister Swenson said. “But she didn’t. She brought scriptures. Maybe that’s why the Lord is helping her do so well on ‘Survivor.’” We amen’ed that. We amen’ed the hell out of that.

Neleh truly was successful, outlasting nearly all the other contestants that season until she made it to the finals against another player named Vecepia. My entire extended family gathered at my Aunt Tami’s house to watch Jeff Probst’s live reading of the last votes. “Please win,” I whispered to myself throughout the broadcast. “Please, please win.”

We screamed in excitement whenever Jeff revealed a card with Neleh’s name on it. We booed Vecepia. We didn’t have any particular issue with the latter. But her success felt like a challenge to our way of life.

Another Deseret defeat

Neleh took second that season. She lost by a vote or two. I cried when it happened. I had recently come off two Utah Jazz finals losses to the Chicago Bulls. My heart could barely handle another Deseret defeat.

After Julie and Neleh, Utah’s dabbling in reality television became more and more common, to the point that we eventually stopped noticing it so much. Producers pushed the this-might-be-a-sister-wife angle less in introducing characters, aware that the novelty had worn off enough that the general public wouldn’t be intrigued to tune in just because a Utah Latter-day Saint was being paraded across the television like an exotic zoo animal.

It’s funny to me now that we cared so much — as if my life or anyone’s perception of Utah could ever change in any meaningful way just because David Archuleta nailed “Bridge Over Troubled Water” in the season finale of “American Idol” (another reality show runner-up from the Beehive State).

It doesn’t really matter, of course. It didn’t then, and it doesn’t now. I know that. I probably kind of knew it then, too.

Still, even today, when a new set of characters is introduced in the first episode of my favorite reality programs and I find out one of them lives just a few miles from my house, I can’t help but think from somewhere not very deep down, “Please don’t be crazy. Please don’t be racist. Please don’t say ‘oh my heck.’”

“Please, please win.”

Note to readers • Eli McCann is an attorney, writer and podcaster in Salt Lake City, where he lives with his husband, new child and their two naughty (yet worshipped) dogs. You can find Eli on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @EliMcCann or at his personal website, www.itjustgetsstranger.com, where he tries to keep the swearing to a minimum so as not to upset his mother. This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.