Robin Hibbard has had some rough nights in the past year and a half, but none could have been as rough as yesterday night.
Decked out in a gray hooded GAP sweatshirt and black capri sweatpants, her bright blond hair glimmering off the ceiling lights of Beulah's Bar-B-Que, 114 S. Garner St., Hibbard appears as though she is ready to sit down with her counterpart and have a conversation about her experiences on MTV's Real World: San Diego. There's only one problem.
She doesn't have a counterpart.
Yes, for the first time in her post-Real World career, Hibbard will be hosting a party alone, as fellow cast member Cameran Eubanks is nowhere in sight.
The twosome were supposed to be co-hosting a Mardi Gras party at the Crowbar, 420 E. College Ave., last night together, but Eubanks missed it due to a fever, leaving Hibbard to run the show by herself. While Eubanks was not able to comment on the nonappearance, Crowbar director of operations Dave Wells was on hand to speak in her absence.
"We're really concerned about [Cameran] and her illness right now, but I spoke with her agent and we are planning on having her up here on Nov. with MJ from the current Real World," Wells said.
While Eubanks may be getting a second chance, Hibbard is still faced with the fact that she is on her own -- at least for one night. Still, she seems surprisingly OK with the idea, sitting down in a corner booth and sipping from a fresh glass of ice water. With a flash of her trademark smirk, she begins speaking about her experiences before and after she appeared on the popular reality series.
"Before I got cast in The Real World, I was a student at the University of South Florida," Hibbard said. "I majored in communications and I also was a cheerleader and a bartender at Coyote Ugly.
"In the time since the show ran, I left Florida and moved to Los Angeles where I got signed to a talent agency," Hibbard said. "I'm hoping to get into hosting, doing something fun where I can be myself and have a microphone. Right now I make many appearances at bars where I get to hang out with all these other cast members. It's much like an actress having a second job as a waitress while she's running around doing auditions."
Even though she's living her life to the fullest now, Hibbard feels that a price came with her stardom. Real World is considered a reality series, but she suggested the fact that "reality" should be considered to be a loose term.
"What was shown was 12 hours of a span of four months," Hibbard said. "There are 23 story editors who work on this show, so any time that happens you're not watching your true life unfold -- you're watching someone else's view on things that happened in your life.
"A person is a dynamic person; they're not one-dimensional," Hibbard said. "That wasn't all of me that was shown when I was drunk and yelling, those were part of larger events that had happened. I may have gotten the raw end of the deal by putting more of myself out there than my roommates, but they didn't get any airtime because of that."
Whether Hibbard did indeed get the raw end of the deal, she said that it doesn't matter because, in the end, it's a two-way street.
"It doesn't matter if I agree with [how I was represented] or not," Hibbard said. "I can't be mad because there is a double-edged sword. I got the opportunity to go on the show and allowed them to portray me in anyway they wanted to, and they made money off me that way. So now I'm making money off them."
Hibbard said that at the moment, she is living her own dream.
"I remember writing a senior paper in high school that plotted out my whole life and on the cover I had a picture of the Hollywood Hills," Hibbard said. "Low and behold four years later I live in Hollywood. It's weird how fate brings you to where you are, and while this isn't the particular path I would have chosen, it did indeed get me here."
