Noting the (rather blasé) interior decor in Benson, Melissa McKeon compares Wake’s interiors to MTV’s way more exciting New York City offices, where she interned in the PR department this summer. Every day, Melissa was surrounded by MTV’s colorful walls covered with TVs and music icons. From the exciting office environment, to the VMAs, to the Jersey Shore house, Melissa had one of the coolest summer internships out there, hands down.
As a communication major with minors in film and psychology, this internship was right up Melissa’s alley. It was no surprise that one of her favorite parts of the job was the friendships she formed. While we sat in Benson, every third person stopped to say hi to Melissa, whom she greeted with a friendly smile and (usually) a goofy comment. Clearly, Melissa is a people person.
“The PR office was full of funny, dynamic people who made daily life more interesting by bringing their characters into the office,” said Melissa.
The relationships even extended outside regular office hours and included dinners after the workday, special margarita nights to celebrate MTV’s 30th anniversary and drinks to honor Oprah. Sound cool? You bet.
While the crazy, fast-paced atmosphere of the office kept Melissa eager to come in to work, attending the VMAs was certainly the highlight of her summer and quite possibly the highlight of her life. I mean, how could it not be?! Melissa and the other interns got a taste of fame during that jam-packed weekend: they were flown out to California, given a $200 budget per day and got to escort the ‘talent’ along the red carpet and into the press room for interviews with MTV.
“The red carpet – which was actually black this year, FYI – was a windy, convoluted, extremely small space. One of the actresses from Teen Wolf, who is totally an up-and-coming star, accidentally slapped me in the face,” she said with a laugh.
Out of the many famous people she escorted, the Foo Fighters were her favorite. At one point during the VMAs, Melissa was sent on a mission to find one of the band members, who had supposedly “gone missing,” only to realize that he had been in his seat all along. The night of the VMAs consisted of the interns taking on jobs wherever they were needed and also included several “fake-outs,” as Melissa called them, where she almost had the chance to escort Nikki Minaj and almost made some great contacts with famous agents.
“I have always wanted to be famous, and being around all of the stars made me feel like I kinda was,” Melissa said. “I saw Seth Rogen, and I swear he was hitting on me! You can quote me on that. My standards are so much higher now.”
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Both at the VMAs and throughout the summer, Melissa, a native New Jerseyian, got to spend some time with the cast of Jersey Shore. When Melissa escorted Pauly D. and Vinny to the press room, the two were beyond excited because Seth Rogen had just called them funny. They were bantering and laughing together about the comment, and Melissa even joined in the fun by contributing a joke of her own! This wasn’t Melissa’s first interaction with the cast members; she got to spend some time with them at the Jersey Shore house earlier in the summer as part of her intern duties.
Reaching across the small table to me, Melissa explains that she was “this close” to all the cast members. She mainly went to the house to make sure things ran smoothly with the interviews and to make sure that MTV was represented well, but she also did pretty much whatever else was asked of her, “like holding Vinny’s sloppy, half eaten ice cream,” she added with a shrug and a smile.
Melissa definitely admits to being star-struck in the midst of all the celebrities, and she could not emphasize enough how awesome the MTV experience was. Maybe she’ll even snag a job at MTV, then she can flirt with Seth Rogen on a regular basis, hold more of Vinny’s melting ice creams and toast to Oprah after a long day at work. Sounds like the good life, if you ask me.