Celebrity All-Star Season of The Apprentice
Bad luck and broken mirrors are the usual associations one makes with the number thirteen, but Donald Trump has been beating the odds for the last twelve seasons with his hit show, The Apprentice. Reining high in the reality TV realm, we have come to expect a lot out of Trump. However, the thirteenth season of The Apprentice, the All Stars season, may actually exceed our expectations.
Premier Guide Media got the lowdown on the next season of The Apprentice from the stars themselves. La Toya Jackson, pop icon, and celebrity apprentice star described the season as both dramatic and very exciting. “There is so much going on. And you will see a lot of confrontations. It’s just going to be a blast, you’ll love it. You will simply love it, everyone will.” There is no arguing that The Apprentice brings something special to the table. Numerous shows have tried to put their own spin on Trump’s tried and true original cut-throat competition. According to Trump, “[The Apprentice is] the number one show at 10:00 on Sundays…We have had fifteen copies of Celebrity Apprentice or The Apprentice, as I say. I guess there was another one last week: It was called The Job and that was just terminated, I understand. But fifteen copies and this is our tenth year, it’s our thirteenth season. So it has been a great success and it continues to do very well in the ratings…”
The show’s success makes sense when one considers that it is good entertainment for the good of others. Perhaps the magic ingredient is the element of surprise, which is just as real for Trump as it is for viewers. Trump explained, “I think what surprises me more than anything else is the fact that these are ‘name people,’ these are people that are successful and in some cases, very, very successful, like Bret and La Toya…They devote so much effort, so much time, so much energy, and I am just amazed…There aren’t very many people that could do it and I give a lot of credit to the people that go on the show. Certainly it’s good for them, but it’s also good for charities…we have raised literally probably over $10 million [for] charity on the various shows. And it’s great. I love it, I love it. We actually had a couple of nights where we raised $1 million in one night, over $1 million in one night. So it has been a great thing for charities.”
Charities such as Bret Michael’s personal charity, Life Rocks, and La Toya Jackson’s choice charity, the National Network to End Domestic Violence, are just a few of the non-profit organizations that have benefitted as a result of The Apprentice. Jackson elaborates on why The Apprentice is so near and dear to so many by saying, “Because this show is so big and so wonderful, [Trump] has given us the opportunity to bring this awareness to our charities where everybody sees it and that interest goes there and then [people] start giving to the charity, which is incredible.
So while the Celebrity All-Star Season of The Apprentice may be the current gem in Trump’s reality TV crown, as good as we expect this season of The Apprentice to be, we can expect Trump (and only Trump) to trump himself next season. In the meantime, sit back, relax, and watch The Apprentice Sundays at 9:00 PM on NBC.
–Written by Waverley Chmura