Category: The Apprentice

If you were to do a Google search on Omarosa’s birthdate — and I assure you many people do — NewMexiKen is at the top of the list. In fact, NewMexiKen is the only web site on the list (as of Sunday evening). My very own Google bomb. Love it.

But I haven’t a clue what her birthdate is.

Gary Susman catches us up on the latest gossip about The Apprentice from Entertainment Weekly’s EW.com.

”The Apprentice” may have ended its season a week ago, but the contestants’ 15 minutes of fame aren’t over yet. Most notably, Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth continues to stir controversy. This week, she continued to do what she seems to do best: get fired. After it was announced that she’d filmed a cameo in a Clairol Herbal Essences ”streaking party” ad, the hair color manufacturer was deluged with angry e-mails and boycott threats, MSNBC reports. On Wednesday, the company announced it was washing its hair of her and dropping her from the ad, issuing a statement that saPOSTID: ”After reviewing the film of all the possible endings a decision has been made not to use the Omarosa take.” Still, her streak isn’t over; she’ll still appear in an episode of NBC’s soap ”Passions” in May, and she says she’s in talks for a role in a sitcom pilot.

”Apprentice” winner Bill Rancic is on his way to a $250,000-a-year position managing Donald Trump’s skyscraper construction project in Chicago (a project that may be tracked in a spinoff series), but the résumé that helped land Rancic the job may have been inflated. Rancic may have claimed that he grew his company, Cigars Around the World, into a ”multimillion dollar” business, but a Securites and Exchange Commission filing issued after Rancic sold the company last year and posted at The Smoking Gun shows the firm’s sale price was just $425,000, with an additional ”consideration” of up to $450,000 coming Rancic’s way through 2006. Close, but no cigar.

Trump held a mini-reunion with some of the contestants on CNN’s ”Larry King Live” on Wednesday, where The Donald announced a mini-scholarship program. The first beneficiary: Troy McClain, the only contestant who didn’t have a degree. ”I read somewhere where Troy wanted to go back to college. And the problem is, he’s got a family. You know, it’s hard to afford college. College is expensive,” said Trump, who made McClain an offer contingent upon the approval of the other contenders. ”The offer is that I will pay for his college education if he wants to go back.” The other contestants voted unanimously that McClain should accept the offer. Said Trump: ”Congratulations. You better pick a nice, good, expensive college.”

Thanks to Jill for the help on this one.

E! Online’s Ask the Answer B!tch has the lowdown on The Apprentice:

The B!tch suspects … that plenty of what goes down on reality-TV shows involves some sort of doctoring–deceptive editing, sinister voice-over work or other such studio magic.

How accurate is my hunch? Consider the latest quasi-real sensation The Apprentice. Bowie Hogg, the jolly Texas contestant, dished me up some lowdown on the show. That feller loves ever-body, but he ain’t afraid o’ spillin’ the chili beans about what really went on at Trump Tower.

Here are just a few facts:

• The boardroom and the suite both lie on the fourth floor, not on separate floors, as all those elevator rides suggest. Contestants rode up and down the elevators to give the behind-the-scenes folks time to move equipment between shoots, which allowed them to use fewer camera crews. “It was just [producer Mark] Burnett trying to save some money,” Hogg says.

• Fired Apprentices never crawled straight from the boardroom to a taxi waiting on the street. Instead, at the beginning of the contest, producers filmed each contestant walking out to the street and into a taxi. That way, the pesky press couldn’t camp outside Trump Tower every day and see who was getting axed.

• Some contestants never actually heard the scathing criticisms Trump seemed to spit at them in the boardroom.

For instance, in the episode where Trump fires Hogg, the Combover Mogul blasts the young cowhand for failing at the black, black art of marketing. When Trump delivers that sting, the camera captures not Trump’s lips but Hogg’s reaction. The reason: Trump actually delivered the critical bitch-slap later–in a sound booth.

Apprentice to American Idol, our Reality Checkpoint is the place for tales of true TV Hogg says that during his actual firing, no one explained why he was booted, and he hasn’t had a chance to ask Mr. Trump about it since.

Okay, halt. Before you dash off that indignant letter to NBC honcho Jeff Zucker about his wanton diddling with the time-space continuum, know that pretty much all reality-TV shows pull similar stunts:

The Answer B!tch continues about other reality shows.

This from Popcultablog*:

I’ve got bad news and bad news about Bill Rancic’s new gig as head honcho of Trump’s Chicago skyscraper project. The bad news is that so far, the financing and approvals for the building have not come through and it’s not a sure thing (although one could imagine Trump trying to drum up interest in said funding using his infomercial reality show as a marketing tool). The bad news is that Mark Burnett is thinking about making a reality show that will follow Rancic (and possibly some of the other Apprentice stars) as the building goes up. Which is all a long way of putting the city of Chicago on a code-red Omarosa alert.

continues to generate about 15% of the search engine driven visits to NewMexiKen. What is it with this obsession? It’s not as if NewMexiKen has photographs of Omarosa, or somehow the naked truth about Omarosa, or even Omarosa’s birthdate.

OK Google, take that.

The Chicago Sun-Times talks to a shrink about Omarosa. The article, by the Sun-Times health reporter, begins:

Omarosa might think she belongs in a big leather chair at the head of a board table. But the snarky apprentice-wannabe’s behavior made her seem better suited for a couch — a psychiatrist’s couch.

All that scheming and lying rendered 30-year-old Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth The Woman America Loves To Hate and left us wondering what makes her tick . . . and tick off everyone else?

West Chicago psychologist, author and “executive coach” Tim Ursiny has his theories. Ursiny has never met Omarosa. But what little he does know about her –courtesy of the producers and editors of “The Apprentice,” mind you — smacks of someone whose self-esteem gauge is hovering dangerously close to empty.

From The Charlotte Observer:

Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth is one of the most well-known of the 16 candidates who competed on “The Apprentice” because of her role as the show’s villain.

Many fans have blamed her for the defeat of Kwame Jackson in the show’s final task. As a member of Jackson’s team she bungled nearly every assignment and was caught lying about them on camera. Donald Trump, in explaining his decision to hire Chicago entrepreneur Bill Rancic over Jackson, faulted Jackson for failing to fire her.

In a conversation at the show’s after party at Trump Tower, Manigault-Stallworth gave her thoughts on Jackson and her performance.

Continue reading Kwame caused himself to lose, Omarosa says

From Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles TImes:

On the final episode of “The Apprentice” on Thursday night, Donald Trump told winner Bill Rancic, “You’re hired.”

Rancic, of Chicago, had a choice of jobs — general manager of the Trump Plaza in Chicago or general manager of the Ocean Trails Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes.

He picked the Chicago job.

“I definitely breathed a sigh of relief,” Mike Vandergoes said with a laugh. He became Ocean Trails’ general manager only a month and a half ago. He had been the director of golf until getting a call from Trump telling him he was promoted.

The last thing Vandergoes wanted was a call from Trump saying, “You’re fired.”

Did anyone else notice the hint from Trump last night that some of this season’s apprentices might be back among the 16 new Trump-wannabes? Omarosa’s was one of the faces they flashed.

The New York Times TV Watch has a take on The Apprentice — Dehumanizing and Mean? It’s All Part of the Fun

Money quote:

All reality shows edit selectively for effect; on “The Apprentice” the unpleasant Omarosa was turned into a corporate version of Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction.”

NewMexiKen’s money is on Kwame.

Slate profiles Mark Burnett, producer of The Apprentice, Survivor, The Restaurant.

The Apprentice, which ends its run on NBC Thursday, is a celebration of one of America’s savviest tycoons. His name is Mark Burnett. Donald Trump plays the show’s playboy, but it’s Burnett, the executive producer and reality-TV mogul, who’s the real icon. Burnett emigrated from London at 22 and has assumed the role of Hollywood’s reigning Brit. He styles himself as the latest in a long line of his country’s gentleman adventurers—the Allan Quatermain of network television. Burnett sees reality TV not as a vehicle for sleaze and humiliation—à la Joe Millionaire or American Idol—but as something noble and heroic. He thinks he can save the world one reality show at a time.

The sun never sets on Burnett’s TV empire. Survivor, which debuted in 2000, still draws boffo ratings for CBS. The Apprentice finale this week will pull down even bigger numbers for NBC (and the reruns on CNBC). The Restaurant, Burnett’s series about the Manhattan dining scene, begins a second glorious season this month. All three shows went “straight to series,” which means they skipped the pilot stage and snagged multiepisode commitments from the networks—a deal reserved for top producers. Burnett claims Survivor draws $425,000 for a 30-second ad spot, the highest rate in series television.

Where’s Troy? Where’s Kwame?

From Reuters: Four of the contestants from the NBC reality television series ‘The Apprentice’ appear in the May issue of ‘FHM’ magazine. (L-R) are Kristi Frank, Katrina Campins, Amy Henry and Ereka Vetrini, who are featured in a seven-page portfolio in FHM shot by Luciana Pampalone. The women were reportedly offered $250,000 to pose nude for Playboy, but instead the women chose to be photographed by FHM wearing lingerie, and for no payment.

From FOX News a fair and balanced report on Omarosa.

Her stint on “The Apprentice” wasn’t the first time Omarosa Manigault Stallworth heard the words “You’re fired.” People magazine says she was bounced from four jobs in two years with the Clinton administration.

A worker at her last job with the Commerce Department says Omarosa was asked to leave as quickly as possible because she was so disruptive. She says, “One woman wanted to slug her.”

Meanwhile, “Apprentice” co-star Ereka Vetrini says she’s exploring a slander action against Omarosa, according to the New York Daily News. The two have been feuding since Omarosa accused Vetrini of using a racial epithet to describe her. Vetrini denies the accusation.

According to Vetrini, Omarosa is “making it up because she wants to write a book on the subject.”

Also from Popcultablog*

You expect some fakery even when you’re watching so-called reality TV. So I don’t really mind that the cab that appears at the end of each Apprentice episode only took the contestants to a nearby hotel where they had to stay for several weeks. And I could tell by the way they were carried that the suitcases were always nearly empty. But come on? Did you know that the loft was actually on the same floor as the boardroom? The elevator went nowhere.

Forget running for president. Nader should do something about this.

The promos would have us believe that two of the apprentices are fired tonight — in the first half hour. They also tell us Omarosa and Troy are back.

Foolishly, NewMexiKen will take the promos at face value. Maybe there was something fishy about last week’s deal to lease the penthouse for $40,800. If so, Trump can fire both Amy and gum-chewing Nick for cheating. That would also mean that Troy should come back, because he was fired when his team lost.

How Omarosa fits in is trickier. Do you suppose Trump is really in this for the ratings? As he himself said, “We have a lot of interesting characters left, but if I were going purely for entertainment value, I would’ve left Sam and Omarosa for the finals.”

Of course, Trump also said, “But I can’t do that. I don’t let the entertainment value enter into my decision at all.” Believe that and you’re as foolish as I am trying to decipher the show’s promos.

4:40 PM MDT

Update after the show: Well I guessed the two that had to go, but like with many things suggested more “opera” than necessary for it all to happen.

$40,800 for a one-night lease. I’m sorry, but that wasn’t a sale, that was luck. This show needs better assignments/projects next time around. (And less lives of the rich and famous to fill the middle of the hour.)

Guess Trump isn’t going into auto sales because Troy would be his guy and Troy is gone. He seemed the most surprised of any when Trump said the magic words.

Just two more shows.

So, how will The Apprentice go this week?

The promos make it look like the board room comes down to Nick and Amy. Could it be? This soon?

Those who commented here last week had these predictions for the final winner:

• Amy
• Nick, but Bill best overall
• Amy, dark horse Bill
• Troy
• Amy, but Bill next

From the [Akron] Beacon Journal, an article on The Apprentice and Donald Trump including a Q&A with Trump. One answer:

A: It’s irrelevant to me, because my job is to pick the best people. It was Omarosa’s time to go, and I’m sure you agree with that (laughs). She was good television but it was her time to go. And it was Sam’s time to go. We have a lot of interesting characters left, but if I were going purely for entertainment value, I would’ve left Sam and Omarosa for the finals. But I can’t do that. I don’t let the entertainment value enter into my decision at all.

Five left: Amy, Bill, Kwame, Nick and Troy. Who’s going to win? Make your prediction and record it for the world to see in Comments.

NewMexiKen still thinks it will be Amy.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary A. Mitchell has a thoughtful take on Omarosa. The column is from March 21.

NewMexiKen is thinking Trump should have fired all six on The Apprentice and hired the 10-year-old with the tiger.