On last week’s episode of The Celebrity Apprentice, Jamie Anderson volunteered to become the project manager on a task that saw Team Infinity and Team Votex create healthy living photo spreads for Cosmopolitan Magazine. With clashing creative visions between Kenya’s desire to do a sexy campaign and Shawn’s athletic vision, Jamie decided to play the appeaser and this resulted in her paying the ultimate price when the women lost the task. Despite her team pushing her to bring Brandi into the boardroom, Jamie decided to bring back Kate. When the gold medalist snowboarder realized the error of her ways, it was a case of too little, too late, as Trump decided to let her go and she became the fourth celebrity to be fired.
I caught up with Jamie to discuss what went wrong.
Murtz Jaffer: Hi Jamie, it’s Murtz.
Jamie Anderson: Hi how is the going?
MJ: Not too bad are you ready to chat?
JA: I am ready.
MJ: You are used to competing by yourself on the slopes. What was it like to work in a team environment and especially on a team that could explode at any minute with Kenya and Brandi?
JA: It was extremely difficult. I mean snowboarding is an individual sport but you are surrounded with people you want to be around that help you learn and perfect and be your best self and coming on a team show like The Apprentice it was just absolute chaos. You couldn’t even really trust your teammates because if you were the boss, instead of people trying to help you and help you do well, your teammates were just trying to poke out everything you would do wrong.
MJ: If I was on The Apprentice, my strategy would always be to hold out on becoming the project manager for as long as possible as the PM is usually the one that Mr. Trump fires. Can you discuss the why you decided to take control of the Cosmopolitan task?
JA: Hmmmmmmm…. well they kind of pressured me to do it. Donald mentioned that because it was a health and fitness type of campaign, he kind of encouraged the athletes to step up. So me and Shawn take a moment and I was like ‘you know what? I will do it… like if you have my back, let’s do this!’ I thought it was going to be a fun project and I have done a little bit of editorial work it’s like ‘why not?’ I wanted to bring some money to Protect Our Winters and you kind got to step up to have that risk and reward.
MJ: Did Shawn also want to do it like did you have to fight her for it or was it more a scenario where you were like ‘not me, not it’ and she simply said it first?
JA: No one really wanted to do it and we kind of knew… like that is why Johnny stepped up as well. Donald mentioned that this task was for an athlete to step up, so us girls got together and I took one for the team. And I knew it. I did kind of want to step back but at the same time I was down to work and see if I was able to accomplish this task and work together with everyone. It didn’t really go as planned.
MJ: Ultimately Jamie, there were two opposing visions for the task. Shawn who wanted to focus on an Olympic and championship type theme and Kenya who wanted to go with the Touch Me theme. You seemed to recognize that these concepts clashed with each other, but ultimately decided to use them both. Can you explain your rationale and if you could go back and could only select one of the two themes, which one would you go with?
JA: My original plan was to definitely embrace the Olympians we had and making the whole feature about strength and health and well being. And I thought that there was no better way to do this than to feature two Olympic gold medalists. Then when Kenya came up with the ‘Touch Me’ idea and she was obviously someone who really cared about Cosmopolitan and felt like she had a really good idea of what they were going to like.
I wanted to work with the whole team because I knew we all had something to bring to the table so I didn’t want to necessarily boycott her idea because I did believe that she had some good input and so that is where I think would have done things differently. Looking at back now, I totally believe in the Olympic champion idea and making it about athletes. Once the lingerie came out and Brandy was trying to do yoga and the whole thing was just kind of like ‘oh shit.’ [Laughs]
You know looking back at it like I am unhappy with the way it went down but it just taught me to hold my ground. Even if these women were older and more intimidating, just to friggen work and be a boss and tell them what’s up because I was actually featured in a recent issue of Cosmopolitan (in their hot and healthy section). My feature was totally about what I wanted to create on our task. It was about five different athletes and their respective workout routines and what they like to eat and what inspires them you know? So that was kind of a little bit of slap in the face because I knew what I wanted to do and I didn’t hold my ground and that is something that I will carry on forever and for me I can take something positive from even that negative experience.
MJ: In the presentation you seemed to refer to your notes and offer the Cosmo editor a lot of the facts while Kenya seemed to ad-lib her portion of the presentation. Was this by design?
JA: Yeah, that’s exactly right. We talked about it.
MJ: It seemed like most members of your team wanted you to bring Brandi back to the boardroom. Can you explain why you chose to bring Kate instead?
JA: [Audible sigh]. I have no idea honestly…
MJ: That was a pretty loud sigh…
JA: I think I let the TV aspect get to me and I knew how entertaining Brandi and Kenya were together. I felt like if I brought them both back, Donald was going to fire me because of how popular they are and how annoying they are together so that crossed my mind…
MJ: You couldn’t have set-up my question any better. That is exactly where I was going …in the boardroom, you said that you didn’t want to have Brandi and Kenya clawing at each other in front of Mr. Trump. Why were you initially against them fighting? It would seem that they would have been targeting each other and not you in that scenario.
JA: Yeah, I mean it could have definitely. I mean could have, should have, would have… I really don’t even like those words because they never make anything feel good but you know if I did have to look back at it yes I would do it differently. I also felt like Kate kind of sucked so I don’t think it was a bad choice to bring Kate back because I don’t think she really helped our team in any of the tasks. And she also kind of distracted us and freak out on the accounting and money and these things and I was like ‘Kate, get the hell out of here! You are not even helping you are distracting this whole project!’ Brandi did what she needed to do. I don’t think she intentionally tried to screw anything up but she definitely got into my head because she told me a lot of stuff and Kenya told me a lot of stuff… I truly was just a little bit confused. There was so much drama and chaos, it’s hard to even think straight when you are that situation. I go back and say to myself ‘oh Jamie you could have done it this way or that way’ but in reality I think it happened exactly perfect and you know it was hard to get fired but I think left with my head held high and with my integrity. You know being a true genuine person and that is what I wanted to portray and I got to bring some light to my charity Protect Our Winters which is really important to me and I happy that it all went down exactly how it did.
MJ: Mr. Trump also mentioned that popularity has nothing to do with his decisions and used his elimination of Kevin Jonas as an example, citing that if he hadn’t fired Kevin, he would have lost all credibility. Do you think star power and the money that a celebrity can bring in influence who stays and who goes on The Celebrity Apprentice?
JA: I do, I totally think so and he’ll say whatever he wants but if you watch the show you can tell like you can tell exactly what is going on.
MJ: And did you sort of have a pocket book or people that you could count on for donation if the situation arose?
JA: I didn’t really have people. I met some people in New York who said they had some investor friends. I am a friggen snowboarder. I don’t have a lot of wealthy like celebrity friends so that definitely was not my strength in the game.
MJ: The men seem to really dislike Geraldo. What did the women think of him?
JA: Honestly when I first met Geraldo, he was really nice to me and seemed like sincere genuine man and now that I am watching the show he looks like a complete egotistic a hole . I called him today on his radio show and it’s still hard because he is really nice to me and he has nothing but good things to say. He kind of feels like a father or a grandfather to me so of course I am going to have that respect for him and I am not going to be disrespectful to anyone (whether they are older or not) but I see how he treated other people and I don’t think that was very appropriate or good.
MJ: What’s next for you and can you tell me more about Protect Our Winters?
JA: Yes! For me this winter I am working with Protect Our Winters. I am going around searching for snow but with all of this climate change and all of this devastation on earth I mean it has been crazy! The lake where I grew up like Lake Tahoe has never been so low. It’s 60% throughout California, it’s is about like to like go up in flames, who knows. I have never seen this level of climate change so drastically in front of my own eyes. I am young. I have only been in the mountains consciously for about two decades and I can’t even believe how much snow is gone and not really coming back and it is shifting all over this planet. It’s really cool to work with Protect Our Winters because they are going around and educating people how important it is to do things more sustainably.
Buy a more eco-friendly car or ride your bike when you can. Support different local farmers. We have change things everyday and every time we buy something. So be mindful of who you are giving your money to. Spread awareness. POW wants to encourage the next generation to have that personal connection with nature so that they can protect our resources and we can be a little bit more conscious of the clean water and the air and the food and some of the most important things in life.
MJ: Awesome thank you so much! Have a great day!
JA: Keep it real. Happy New Year!
The Celebrity Apprentice continues tonight at 8 p.m. on NBC
