Geek Show
Nate Dern debuts this week in the CW's Beauty and the Geek, in which eight teams of one gorgeous woman and one socially challenged man compete to win $250,000.
 (Dina Rudick / Globe Staff Photo) |
The show starts Wednesday, but word is already out that you’re competing. Does being a TV geek make you popular in the real world, or at least on Harvard’s campus?
It makes you more well known, but not popular in a cool way. If you’re known for being awkward, that doesn’t make you not awkward.
Honestly, no. When I was getting ready for my first round of interviews, I thought I should probably dress geeky, and my roommate was helping. He looked at what I was wearing – a pair of blue plaid pants, a pink plaid shirt, and a trucker’s cap with my name on it. My roommate said he thought that would be fine.
You don’t always wear a beard, but you do on the show. As a social anthropology major, do you notice people react differently to you with the beard?
They do, especially when I get a really big beard. I also wear a lot of thrift-store clothes. In high school, some kids called me a hobo. I also don’t really wear deodorant. I tried it once in sixth grade, and it burned my armpits, so I didn’t do it again. It’s become a statement.
Did hanging with all of those “beauties” change your mind about that?
I have been reconsidering using it. It’s been a litmus test. The right girl won’t care. Besides, it’s more of a musk than an odor.
What’s the square root of 407?
I have to think. Wait, I have to pull out my calculator. I don’t know. I’m more of a Star Wars geek. It’s 20.17.
There’s only one MIT geek on the show, but two from Harvard. Does that mean Harvard is outpacing MIT’s geek quotient?
It could be. Or it could be that the potency of geekiness is that much stronger at MIT – you need two Harvard geeks to equal just one MIT geek.
Your house at Harvard is coed, like the house on the show. Are there beautiful women walking around?
Oh, yeah. There’s this one gorgeous girl on my floor, Gabby, that I get to see in a towel once in a while. But you have to be a gentleman – keep it PG.
Did you expect to find true love in college?
Maybe I did already, and I can’t tell you.
Everyone on the show had to abstain from sex during the taping, right? Was that tough?
Not difficult for me. My college life isn’t like Animal House. It’s more filled with response papers and social theory. I’m more familiar with how to unwrap a passage from [Michel] Foucault than a condom.
– Janice O’Leary
