Dave Holmes And Tokyo Talk ‘Homecoming,’ The Perils Of Being A “Negative Booboo,” And Julie’s Demons

The Real World Homecoming: New Orleans was a revelation. Danny and his don’t ask don’t tell ex-boyfriend Paul achieved closure, Melissa dropped one-liners and GIF fuel for days, Kelley and Matt stayed largely out of the way as Jamie roped and Julie stirred the pot. And right in the middle of it, a new guy: where once there had been David now stood Tokyo, tank tops ditched in favor of low headbands, aloof attitude replaced with a new serenity and wisdom.

22 years later, Tokyo seemed a little bit scarred by his original Real World experience, but over the course of the season, he appeared to make peace with his younger self, his housemates, and his own propensity to scat-sing. I caught up with him a couple of days after the partial cast reunion at last weekend’s Critics’ Choice Awards to talk about Y2K cable fame, the Chappelle effect, what else he’s got up the sleeve of that Sgt. Pepper jacket, and what really went down with this season’s rogue (ex)Mormon.

DAVE HOLMES: Tokyo!

TOKYO: Dave. It is such an honor to be within your Zoom presence. Your Zoomresence. Your zressence. Fantastic.

The feeling is more than mutual. How are you?

I’m fantastic, brother. Thank you so much for asking.

Where are you? You guys were just in LA, right?

We were, literally two seconds ago. I literally landed at midnight, because there was some freak storm that came through. So literally yesterday in LA, today back in Chicago, talking to you.

How were the Critics’ Choice Awards? 

It was good. Besides the People’s Choice Awards 22 years ago, I’ve never been to an awards show. I forget how small things are. It was just a hotel convention center room with a small stage. I forgot the whole physics behind the experience.

Where was it?

The Beverly Hilton.

Oh, lovely.

Yeah, I mean, I guess everything in LA is out of the way, but it’s just so tucked away. You can’t just walk up to a 7 Eleven.

No, no. You’re isolated.

You are very isolated.

You’re in a fancy prison. But fun experience overall?

Oh, yes, absolutely fantastic experience. All the chaos coming into some kind of order. As a person that can literally go into a shell and just watch, it’s beautiful.

How was your experience with The Real World Homecoming?

Homecoming has been great. Just coming into it with a different mindset was great for me. 20 years ago, I was the one that always was out, you know? I didn’t really get the experience that everyone else did. I had all surface stuff. This go-round, I wanted to be more available, and to understand, and to just get to know people.

Also, this time, we had a new house, so visually, as well as spiritually and emotionally, it was all new to me. It was quite interesting.

I bet. What was your life like after the original season ran? Like, immediately after, what did you do? 

You know, I think I went back to school for a second. But life just went back to kind of normal. I knew that I had done the show, and I knew that people knew that I had done the show. But I just went back to my cave or whatever. I did a couple of plays. I just dropped off. You know, I think everything stopped after Chappelle’s Show. So if I got a couple of speaking gigs on a college tour or something, all of that just stopped after Chappelle. It wasn’t hard feelings. It was just like, the memory is over, and you need to be able to move on. And that’s what I thought I did.

Did you find yourself getting recognized the first time around? 

Yeah. And it didn’t bother me or anything like that. It was…it was…it was fine. But if you couldn’t say what you knew me from, I wouldn’t tell you. If someone said, “Hey, I know you from somewhere, was it like your sister’s wedding?” I’d go like, “I don’t have a sister.” “Okay, I’m sorry.” You know? I would give you every reason other than the show, because I can’t assume that that’s what it is. Because if I say, “Yeah, you know me from The Real World,” and they say, “No, actually, you’re my cousin,” then it’s like, well, shit.

Can I tell you, that was exactly my experience. 

Right? You want to give them a minute, but you don’t want to take all day. If you don’t tell me what you know me from, I’ll just say, “Well, you know, maybe it’s another lifetime and we’re star-crossed voyagers.” But I will never tell you, ever.

Because it could be from another real life thing. And it feels self-aggrandizing in a way to be like, “Oh, you probably know me from TV.” It feels boastful somehow, even though sometimes it’s just a fact. 

Right! And this journey, this exchange should be two ways. Like I should remember that I do know you, if in fact I do. Because for me to say, “you know me from TV,” it’s just completely negating the fact that maybe we did go to summer camp together. And I didn’t make that effort to say, “Hey, remember Miss Schlosky’s class,” or whatever the situation is. Sorry to go on a tangent on that.

No. Listen, I’m with you on that one. What were you thinking and feeling when people would approach you back then? 

Again, I’m a person that just doesn’t go to social events too often, right? And when I do, I have in my head, “Okay, 15 minutes, you’re doing two rounds, thanking everyone, thanking the host, blah blah blah.” I have to save up that energy, but then I also have to know when I have nothing left and all I’m gonna be doing is being a negative booboo. I would have to save like, three-minute pockets of energy for when someone would recognize me, to genuinely give them what they deserve for taking the time to say hello, and for watching. But I had to save that up. Like every day, I’d say, “Okay, I’ve got 13 three-minute pockets of three minutes, let’s do this.” And usually that’s more than I needed, because I usually only needed like two. But the point is, I had them available.

That’s impressive self-knowledge. 

Thank you. I want people to know that it’s never inauthentic. It’s always real. But we also need to realize what we’re capable of, you know what I mean? Because if I can’t give you what you deserve, and I’m not capable of doing anything derivative thereof, then it’s best that we just don’t have the interaction, because I’m not worthy of the moment. But it’s never going to come across that way. It’s going to come across like, Oh, you’re an asshole. So you’ve got to work it. You’ve got to somehow work your way to making something happen when people give you the effort.

Were you able to think of these things in these terms back then? 

Oh no, no, no. Back then, I had the answer, and it was just “let’s get through it.” Now, I can form a better question. When you form a better question, you get more understanding, a more in-depth answer. The difference is: then, it was just an answer, and now, it’s a better question and a better answer. Now it’s just a living, breathing understanding.

Wow. Okay. This is fascinating. My life changed overnight, because of MTV, like yours did. And of course it was great, and in many ways it was exactly what I wanted out of life. But it was also disorientating, and I found myself with the sort of questions and concerns that you had, but no ability to verbalize them, and nobody to verbalize them to. Like, a Carson Daly or an Ananda Lewis had been preparing for this job and had intermediate steps along the way. So anytime I would be in a space with people who had been on The Real World, I gravitated toward them, because I knew that their experience was similar to mine. And some of them were able to talk about it and analyze what was strange about it, and then there were others whose deepest thought about it was like “It’s cool! People say hi, and it’s nice.” And it’s like: yeah, it is nice, but it’s also very weird. 

Yeah, it is. You just have to let yourself know that. Because the thing is that the people who will come up to you and say, “Hey, I loved this thing you did,” they know in the back of their minds that they’re intrusive to your day. That’s why the best people who come up are the ones that are apologetic at first, because they know they’re stopping you from doing whatever it is you’re doing. Your responsibility is to realize and understand how much courage it takes to first lead with an apology, because it’s always hard for us to say we’re sorry. It’s hard for us to apologize, but they’re leading with it, because they’re excited to see you. So it’s our responsibility to say “okay, it took a lot of courage for them to get to an I’m sorry, so they can let you know this moment is special to them.” Once you have an understanding that it’s awkward for them as well, then you’re on a level playing field. Now, I’m no longer just this guy from The Real World, and you’re no longer just a person behind the counter of Walgreens. Now, we’re both awkward, so let’s talk and have a moment.

I find that these things heighten however it is that you feel about yourself. It would often be teenagers who would come up to me, because it was MTV. And whenever it was teenagers, I would just assume that they were making fun of me in some very dry, secret way, which with teenagers is often a safe assumption. I rushed through so many of these interactions, because I just assumed that I was being clowned in some vicious way, and looking back I wish I could have just relaxed. Like, maybe there really is such a thing as a nice kid who wants to say hello. 

Yeah, but see, that’s the issue. You have to be multi-understanding and multi-faceted about how to understand things. Like, you can always hear your name. There’s some psychological term for this, but you can be in a crowded room with all kinds of people talking, but if someone says your name way in the other corner, you can hear it, because you’re sensitive to it. So sometimes you’ll hear people talking about you, and not in a good way. When they come up, and they say, “Hey, so you’re from the show,” you already know they’re starting from a place of negativity. They don’t know that, but you already know this is going to be a short-ass fucking conversation. Some people take the opportunity to get to know you, and some just want to pick on you and then say, “This is the real world.” Oh, I have heard that so many times.

Were you able to lean on anyone for support? 

I wasn’t really able to do that last time. If I needed to lean on someone, I’d lean against the wall. But this time? Yes: Melissa and Kelley.

There really is no after-care for what you come off a show like The Real World, is there?

No. There’s no real taxiing and then takeoff, so you can’t really have a landing. You know what, maybe that’s the crux of it. You can’t just go to the moon or whatever without having to prepare for it. It takes higher life forms to make UFOs or UAPs that can do whatever they do. For us, we need taxiing and a runway to take flight, and then we need to come down. Because we don’t get that opportunity, we need to be prepared in a higher form of understanding. If you take flight in something that does not need a runway, you better be prepared for the way it’s going to come down. But it forces you to become kind of mature about interactions with people in public. Like, don’t be alone with people, I would never be alone with somebody ever, like ever. Always have a door open. But you just have to learn these things.

On Homecoming, when you talked about “Come On Be My Baby Tonight,” you said “Dave Chappelle made it a problem.” Can you elaborate on that?

Well, I mean the thing is that Chappelle’s Show, that’s when the song became IT. Dave Chappelle, like, notarized it. He gave it his stamp of “this shit is cool.” And I was in the mindset of, okay, I’m just doing this for this one time, and then I’m ready to let it go. Well, that’s when it took off. It literally went over my head and started doing stuff that I had no clue it was doing. That’s just how the universe works. I chose to leave it behind, and in the same universe, the opposite of what I chose to do happened. But you have to be prepared for that, and I wasn’t. I wasn’t prepared for the idea of a universe where that song didn’t die when I told it to. So yeah, it’s just interesting, bro.

How did all of that feel to you? 

I mean, it feels amazing, lovely, great. But I never get too high, never get too low. When things go great, I’m thankful. And when it doesn’t go so well, I’m not going to beat myself up for it too long. But that’s my essence. Never get too high and never get too low.

What’s different about your experience with the public this time around in Homecoming? 

This time it’s a lot more…I don’t want to say positive, but there’s a lot more light involved. There’s a light inside people who are like, “Oh my gosh, aren’t you Tokyo?” Because here’s the thing: If you say “David,” you’ve already started, like, incorrectly, because I’m no longer that being. So when they say “oh my gosh, Tokyo,” that’s like the cost of admission. You’ve acknowledged and seen my light, let me see yours. And now it’s like, there’s just so much light, we’re just both blinded. It’s a different experience completely.

Well, it sounds like you’re enjoying it. And now, of course, I have to ask about the Julie situation. 

Julie will always be a part of this family of misfits. It concerns me that she doesn’t see how dangerous her actions could have been for me. The universe demanded drama to ascertain how I would handle it, and I completed the challenge with truth. Anything remaining is between Julie and her demons.

Okay then. So what’s next for you? 

You know what, that’s a great question. I’m trying to figure that out now, but I think that’s part of the journey. When I do figure it out, you’ll know, because nothing I put effort into is going to be short of amazing.

Well, great. Good luck. 

I appreciate you, man.

Dave Holmes is an editor-at-large for Esquire.com, host of the Earwolf podcast Homophilia, and his memoir Party of One is in stores now. He also hosts the Real World podcast Truu Stowray, available wherever you get your podcasts.