Jenny McCarthy, Carmen Electra and Chris Hardwick Remember the Horny Lunacy of MTV’s ‘Singled Out’ 
 (Exclusive)

Formalwear and flowers had no place on MTV’s entry into dating shows.

On Singled Out — which debuted June 5, 1995 — 50 guys and 50 girls angled to be chosen by two lonelyhearts, who made eliminations based on shallow categories (say, “Wealth” or “Legs”) and WTF stunts (one hopeful imitated a cow giving birth!).

The prize? A day date that wouldn’t require a network chaperone to, say, California’s Catalina Island.

Nimble Chris Hardwick hosted, while stars-in-the-making Jenny McCarthy and later Carmen Electra wrangled the singles. Says Hardwick: “When MTV started airing it four times a day, it occurred to me that maybe we were onto something!”

In the Beginning

Having hosted the short-lived MTV game show Trashed and VJ-ed for the network’s beach house, Hardwick, now 53, was a natural choice. “Since I’d always wanted to host game shows and I couldn’t think of a good reason to say no and go back to complete my philosophy degree, I very quickly accepted,” he tells Us. This was no traditional hosting gig, though. Asked to describe the role he played, Hardwick spitballs: “Ringmaster seems to cover it! But… snarky clown? Dating pool lifeguard? Floppy-haired game-show traffic cop? I think any of those work!”

For McCarthy, though, MTV was not about to hire a Playboy centerfold — even if she had just been named Playmate of the Year! “I decided to take matters into my own hands,” McCarthy, now 52, tells Us. “MTV was doing these giant cattle-call auditions with hundreds of hopefuls lined up, so I just… got in line.” Her ruse wasn’t discovered till she’d made the final six. She recalls, “I could almost hear the collective ‘Oh, brother… But to their credit, they didn’t stop me.”

Quite the opposite. They were sold on the way she subverted expectations: “I leaned all the way into self-deprecating humor, went full goofball and made it clear I wasn’t intimidated by the guys — I could dish it out as much as they could,” she says. “I think seeing a woman with confidence and edge who could flip the script was kind of refreshing for them. And just like that, I got the gig.”

Not without one weird restriction, though: For season 1, she was told not to show her stomach. “They were weirdly anti–crop tops, probably because of my Playboy past,” she says. “I think there was this quiet fear I might suddenly rip all my clothes off or something!”

One of her wildest memories actually occurred right before her first episode, when the show was shooting in Lake Havasu, Arizona, and she, uh, accidentally lit her hotel room on fire. “A candle was sitting on top of my hot rollers, which eventually melted, caught fire and set the wall — and then the ceiling — on fire. It went up fast,” she remembers. “The fire department told me I probably had five minutes left before I would’ve expired.” Still, two hours later, she’d showered, put on makeup and made it on stage for her debut. “I came in hot, in every possible way.”

How It Worked

Singled Out was ridiculousness long before there was a show by that name. Where else would losers submit to a toilet seat around their neck because they’d been “dumped”? Says Hardwick: “People were willing to perform just about any silly task because they were on MTV.” And viewers loved seeing themselves in the teens and twenty­somethings who cycled through — some picked up by the Singled Out van that cruised Venice, California, for talent!

In round 1, the masked “pickers” (the main contestants) hopped onto a throne, which concealed the 50 eager singles behind them. While McCarthy wrangled the horde (hopped up on free candy and soda), Hardwick would unveil categories describing certain qualities, like height or facial hair. Any potential date who didn’t fit with the picker’s preferences was axed; all the rejects would file out — but in later seasons, the picker could present a “golden ticket” and keep one hottie to move to the next round.

No. 2 was a Dating Game–style Q&A, with the picker asking the potential matches to do incredibly silly things to prove their worth. Such as: imitate the sound of an “excited” car, persuade a staffer dressed as a roach to check into a roach motel (and leave the bug-averse picker alone), trim the “hair” from an oversize nose or put on a turban, look into a crystal ball and predict what would happen on their first date. Yep. Notes Hardwick: “If the picker had said to the dudes, ‘Dress up like a banana and jump into this giant bowl of cornflakes!’ they probably would have done it without thinking twice.”

Finally, with three people left, a lightning round would eliminate all but one, who was then revealed to the picker. Unsurprisingly, it was not always love at first sight.

Success… and Change

Singled Out was a hit. Hardwick was offered a raise after that first season, and he learned this was not a given: “My agent at the time said, ‘They are not in the habit of offering to give away money, so I would take this as a sign that the show is doing well.’”

McCarthy didn’t entirely grasp how huge a sensation the show was until she was asked to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. “I actually said, ‘Why would a rock magazine want me on their cover?’ I genuinely had no idea how major that was,” she tells Us. “I’d worked in a Polish grocery store for seven years — I wasn’t exactly keeping up with media milestones. But once the issue came out, I was like, ‘Oh… s–it.’ It was the door that opened all the doors.”

One of those doors led to McCarthy’s exit: In 1997, she landed her own sitcom, NBC’s Jenny. (It costarred Heather Paige Kent, a.k.a. future Beverly Hills Housewife Heather Dubrow!) Already a fan of the show, Electra, now 53, auditioned. “Before I went, I realized I was gonna have to get over being so shy and just go for it — pretend I’m with my friends and not strangers,” she tells Us. She nailed it, and McCarthy passed the baton in one special episode. “I thought she was so cool,” Electra recalls, “the best energy, a girls’ girl.”

Hardwick found both “absolutely wonderful,” regardless of their stature in the industry when they arrived. “Jenny became a star during the run of the show. When she left, Carmen came on already a star, and they both remained so down to earth, kind and funny through all of it,” he says.

Burning question: Did the female cohosts get hit on by the single guys? “All the time,” Electra says, but she was dating someone at the time and never said yes to a contestant.

In the McCarthy era, though, things didn’t get to the asking-out stage. “Most of the guys were terrified of me,” she tells Us. “Maybe in the first season they’d try a whistle or throw out a cheesy line, but by the second season, they knew better. I was pretty ballsy with them. I used to smack them — hard — right in the face on a regular basis on camera. It got to the point where MTV had to hire five extra security guards to blend into the crowd of 50 guys on set, just in case things got out of hand. Every now and then, I’d feel a sneaky pinch, so the bodyguards were there to step in fast if needed. But I usually just waited for the camera light to go on, and then I got my revenge.”

As with McCarthy, Big Opportunities came to Electra. “One day, a bunch of men in black suits appeared on set. It was UTA,” she says. “It was so serious but really cool.” She landed those agents — not to mention a little show called Baywatch, which she shot on weekdays, with four episodes of the game show on weekends. The paparazzi couldn’t get enough of her, and kids at the mall would come “running running running to get to me.”

The Singled Out experience, though, was total fun for her. “It was like college,” Electra says. “We were just nuts and completely out of our minds with the costumes, dancing and the way we acted. Every week, we’d go to a bar and celebrate and drink our asses off. Like, way too much.”

Before the show ended in 1998, other now-familiar faces appeared: Stacy “Fergie” Ferguson (with her band Wild Orchid) and then–Party of Five star Jennifer Love Hewitt were both pickers, and Vince Vaughn acted in a few sketches for $150 a day.

Why We Remember It

The show went way beyond MTV, especially in 1996, when it inspired an episode of Boy Meets World and many a parody: On SNL, Molly Shannon’s Catholic schoolgirl Mary Katherine Gallagher was a picker. And on The Dana Carvey Show, Stephen Colbert spoofed Hardwick with his trademark “hair drapes” (those bangs!), while Carvey — costumed as Unabomber Ted Kaczynski — was the picker. Bonus: Selma Blair as a hopeful single! And in the 1997 comedy Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, Mira Sorvino’s Romy applies for the show, only to be told she’s too old and to “try VH1.”

To Hardwick, those homages signified that Singled Out had become a cultural touchstone, and they were also heaven to the self-described comedy nerd. “Having so many legendary performers I idolized in the sketches really blew my mind in the best way.” And for the record, he thought those hair drapes were “so cool” at the time!

The Aftermath

Two tries at replicating Singled Out resulted in two fails. A YouTube-only version came and went in 2018 after seven episodes. And in 2020, the Quibi streaming service (which also came and went) rebooted the show with Keke Palmer and Joel Kim Booster as hosts.

A New Perspective

Calling Singled Out a “total trailblazer,” McCarthy says, “It was definitely its own wild animal — loud, chaotic and totally unapologetic — but it paved the way for so many dating competitions that came after. Sure, The Bachelor had roses and romance, but we had 50 horny guys in tank tops trying to win a date in under 30 minutes. It was messy, ridiculous and kind of genius in its own way.”

Reminiscing for Hardwick brings back the whirlwind: “It all happened so fast and all at once that the show sometimes just feels like this lightning-fast, high-octane, grunge-guitar-power-chord, super-saturated-color blur of a dream I had, and I question whether or not it was even real!”

Nonetheless, he relishes his time on MTV during its heyday. “Having come from chess club, computer camp and D&D groups, I really struggled to feel comfortable around the ‘cool kids,’ and that job helped me realize that maybe I could.”

And for Electra, it was all over too soon. “I wanted more!”

Where Are They Now?

McCarthy is a panelist on The Masked Singer and has her own Formless Beauty line. Electra, too, is in the beauty space with her brand-new Electra Skincare. (The two also appeared together in a Skims campaign.) And Hardwick has been steadily working as a host (Talking Dead, The Wall) and stand-up comedian. McCarthy says she’s primed for a Singled Out revival, though — and “soon, before Chris and I need teleprompters the size of billboards!”