Rebecca "Becky" Blasband is a singer-songwriter and screenwriter known as a cast member on The Real World: New York, the first season of MTV's reality television show The Real World.
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Rebecca Blasband was born and raised in New Hope, Pennsylvania to a psychiatrist father and a German immigrant mother who runs an antique store in Philadelphia, to which her family moved to when Blasband was thirteen. She attended NYU Film School, and worked as an actress with playwright David Mamet's theater company. She ultimately returned to her first love, music, and formed a band with Adam Schlesinger, the leader of Ivy, saying of the group's sound, "It was sort of Manchester-pop stuff. But after a while I started getting into Bob Dylan and things like that, and my direction kind of changed."[1][2][3]
Blasband was cast in The Real World: New York, the first season of MTV's long-running reality television series, The Real World, for which she was paid $2,500.[1]
In the seventh episode, Blasband had a heated argument with her African-American roommate, Kevin Powell, about the quality of life in The United States, and racism. Blasband said that the intense argument match was completely blown out of proportion and edited to portray her and Powell as extremist, and stated in 1996 that she and Powell were on good terms.[1]
During the course of the series had a romance with the show's director, Bill "Corky" Richmond. During the show, the three female cast members were sent to Jamaica's Hedonism II resort. Blasband and Richmond became close while in Jamaica.[4][5] This upset the show's producers, who fired Richmond, and established a rule that off-camera personnel could not get involved with cast members.[1]
Warner/Chappell Music signed Rebecca to a publishing contract and financed a surprisingly solid extended-play CD cheekily entitled The Rebecca Blasband. She moved to Denver, Colorado in March 1995, and has opened for Edwyn Collins.[1]