’90’s House’ Hosts Christina Milian and Lance Bass Bring Us Back to the 90s

Emily Aslanian September 22, 2017, 1:00 pm

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90's House - Lance Bass, Christina Milian — MTV

Lance Bass and Christina Milian

Ready for a throwback? MTV is premiering a competition reality series called 90’s House, where 12 millennial housemates must adjust to life without their cell phones or social media, among other challenges related to the decade. If they successfully unplug and sweep the competition during the show’s challenges, the winner will take home two VIP tickets to a 90’s cruise, a Mazda Miata and $90,000.

Hosts Christina Milian and Lance Bass gave us the skinny on the show and answered a lightning round of questions about their favorite 90s-related things.

And scroll down a bit for an exclusive video clip from the series!

What are we going to see in this crazy, nostalgic series?
Lance Bass: A lot of bad clothes and some really bad puns. It was really the silliest show I’ve ever been a part of, just to walk down memory lane and be reminded of the good old days. As a kid of the 90s it just felt so cool to be reminded of your favorite music and all these great icons who come to the house. It was amazing, and it was a great social experiment to see these millennials have to deal with not being on a cell phone, having AOL dial-up, and the only thing you can play with is a Bop-It or your Nintendo 64.

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Can you explain the format? How is it going to play out?
Bass: If you like shows like Big Brother, it’s like that. It’s a competition show where a group of people have to live in a house, and one by one they get kicked out. The one that acts the least 90s is the one who gets kicked out of the house, and we do that by tons of different games and competitions throughout the season, like shoot music videos for MTV and doing all kinds of fun things.

What to you is absolutely essential for a show called 90’s House to have in it?
Milian: I think the most essential thing is to have a boom box, a cassette player, or a VHS, because those are the last days, especially for VHS tape, so I would definitely say a whole plethora of Blockbuster movies on VHS.

Bass: You have to have a Furby. We have tons of those in the house. And you have to have terrible, terrible clothes. You’ll see every outfit that I wear is just horrible. I cover from 1990 to 1999, so we’re talking about MC Hammer, going into In Living Color and Saved by the Bell, and into our awful NSYNC looks. But of course Christina Milian rocks every outfit that she wears on the show. I’m like, “How do you look so good and I look like a tool bag?”

Christina, how excited were you to put on some of these amazing fashion items that you get to wear?
Milian: I was nervous and excited at the same time, like, “What’s it going to be?” except we were actually wearing real 90s clothing. It’s not like we made new clothes look old or something. It was really from the time, real deal, authentic clothes. The Clueless era kind of made it – that, and like the alternative grunge era. Those were cool times as far as fashion goes.

What kind of challenges are we going to see? I saw the trailer has a fax machine in it and there’s all sorts of tech things. Are there any non-tech challenges, too?
Milian: Yeah, I mean those aren’t even challenges. What you see in that is just what they’re having to live with. The real challenges are a bit different. For one, they have to go in the ring and have beats and do like a rap against each other but they have like Salt-N-Pepa as their coaches.

Bass: There are some challenges where the house divides, sometimes into girls and boys, and we’ll give them challenges, like shooting a music video. And yeah, we have amazing cameos that come in. Like, one episode we did with the Nickelodeon cast of All That, so they came in and taught the kids how to do comedy work, so they had to do an opening of a sitcom and do a scene from that. From music to TV to film – we cover it all and we put these contestants through it all.

What kind of reactions are we going to see from the contestants in this environment?
Milian: There’s love and there’s things that kind of happen within the house. They end alliances sometimes, like one minute they’re your teammate and the next thing you know they’re all against you. I was actually pleasantly surprised. They didn’t go too cuckoo without the phones. They had their own Rolodex and they had to make real phone calls from a regular phone and everything. It’s not like we’re in the dark ages, you know what I mean? We’re not cavemen, but it’s still the simplicity of experiencing human reaction with each other rather than always on our phones and stuff. They did pretty good. I guess they were prepped for that.

Bass: I was surprised how every single contestant was really invested in this show. They all had so much fun, and after about four or five days in, no one even talked about their electronics at all. Everyone was bonding and fighting and learning how to communicate with each other. It was a nice surprise to see that these kids really had a great experience because they had to deal with each other with no buffer in between.