An interesting discussion with Mr. Gafford follows. I especially enjoyed his boardroom strategy for when he orchestrated Audrey’s firing.
Murtz Jaffer: Can you tell me a little bit about your background before you got on The Apprentice?
John Gafford: Went to school. Out of high school, I went to college for a couple of years and then dropped out. I was running a college bar when I was 20, it was awesome. Did that for about seven months. Sold the business. Then I moved to Orlando and started working for Hooters of America. I worked for them for five years. Started as a manager-in-training and by the time I left, I was an area supervisor and was running several units. Moved all over the country with Hooters. St. Louis, Oklahoma City, Detroit, Atlanta, Melbourne. They moved us quite a bit. I was in a different city every six months. After that, in 2000, I left to go work for some friends of mine in Atlanta at a club. I went there. I was the general manager. It was an amazing club. Couple of million dollars in it. Every celebrity in the world came to it. We were killing it. Ray Lewis happened to walk into it one day, and people got murdered outside of it and the next day there was a picture in the paper about the crime scene that featured our bar and it absolutely annihilated that business and it went under. It was bad. The week of the Super Bowl, we did close to half a million and then all of a student it dropped off to about $17,000/week. It was hard. You go from being on top of the world there, to being nowhere. From there I did a consulting gig from some other bar owners and wound up being a partner there. Did the bar thing for another year and then just got sick of the life. Got sick of the 90 hours per week. Working all night. Drinking too much. It was impossible to have a girlfriend because you’re married to the bar and I was just over it. I wanted to get into sales.
I went and learned how to sell cars and I was extremely good at it, but I hated it. Because the only way to make money was to swindle people out of theirs basically. I did that for about three months. I was salesman of the month, my second month there. Sold 30 cars in one month, which is unheard of in that business. I was selling high-end Infiniti’s. Then my sister (who was working for years with some of the top level people in Amway), we started to launch our own multi-level marketing company and unfortunately it was like the only bad business deal that I have ever had in my life. We didn’t do enough research on it and our product set was not the greatest. Our marketing partner flaked out on us at the last minute and we ended up losing about $100,000 on it. We didn’t know what we were going to do and my sister was doing a consulting job for somebody out in Dallas, taking a look at this insurance company and how it run and how it sold insurance and she called me up in Atlanta and told me that we were moving to Florida the next day and starting an insurance agency. I was like cool.
Moved to Florida the next day. Got my driver’s license. An insurance course is about 14 hours. You can do it online. I got on the computer at 9 AM and got off at 1 AM in the morning and a week later took my state final for insurance license and passed and went to work. In the first four months of our insurance agency, we put half a million dollars in. We were killing it. We started hiring a bunch of great interns. Things got really good and I moved to Tampa (because I was living in North Florida) on April 1 2003. Did the insurance thing down here. Met my girlfriend, who I actually went to high school with but I met her in a bar. We have been together ever since. I ran into a guy and we started talking. He was an engineer at Verizon that managed 176,000 endpoints within their network utilizing some pretty big business solutions and he had this business plan that he wanted me to look at and it was basically offering small and medium-sized businesses, big business solutions. Instead of these companies buying these $100,000 software things, he wanted to offer it to them as a service. So we worked some deals with the software companies and then we pitched it to a guy named Hugh Evans (who is one of the largest land developers in Florida). He really liked it and us and basically invested in us and gave us an unlimited amount of funds to run the business and we then proceeded to hire the best engineers that we could find. We started a medical brand, we hired the medical records personnel from Tampa General Hospital and just started getting really talented people and the business just sort of took off.
MJ: And you have been doing that for like a year and a half?
JG: Yeah, about a year and a half. Really the big expansion and the big growth period really started right before I took off to go and do The Apprentice, which was funny timing.
MJ: So then what happened to the insurance thing with your sister?
JG: It’s still running. In insurance, one you have a good amount of business and you have a lot of agents out and selling, insurance runs itself. I have an office manager that kind of runs everything and my sister kind of oversees it. We probably have like six or seven agents. Most insurance agencies have a lot of agents, but you only have like five who can really sell. We have some really solid agents in Florida.
MJ: So you basically run that without actually being there?
JG: Yeah, I am never there. I get calls from Joy (my office manager), twice a week about things and I make some decisions. My sister basically runs it. Joy really is in charge of the whole thing. Without her, I don’t know how the place would run. She is a great great employee.
MJ: Can you tell me a little bit about applying for The Apprentice?
JG: I was sitting around. My sister called me from Jacksonville and said ‘why don’t you go to this open casting call.’ I said that I didn’t want to go on a reality show and she begged and pleaded and I went with there. We got there. My sister is very tall (like I am) and it was just funny when we walked in together. One lady that was in our group said that we walked in looking like the mob. People were coming up to us asking what they should do and where they should go. It’s like, I don’t know. I don’t work here.
MJ: How tall are you?
JG: I am 6″4. She’s six feet, so we have a tall family. So anyway, we kind of found out what kinds of questions they were asking by talking to the people that were walking out. When you wait in line, they cut you into groups of 10. So I got to know all of the women that I was waiting in line with, and started asking them political questions. Luckily for me, because my sister and I are conservative Republicans, we got lumped in with a bunch of liberal Democrats. So then I thought that this was great. I just started asking them what they thought and who they were were voting for. So we got in the room and we sat down. One of the casting people threw out Bush vs. Kerry and I went into my spiel of the uneducated and the liberal vote (and I did this basically just to stir the pot). I said that liberal women basically vote primarily democratic because of Roe v. Wade (which all of them agreed to because of abortion rights). Then I went into this thing about how Democrats constantly pound that but you never see Republicans or Conservatives wanting to address that issue because they have to keep the older people happy, but at the same time, they don’t really go there. I just thought that it was unfortunate that is the reason that they were voting that way. If that’s the only reason that you are voting for somebody, that’s a pretty bad reason to be voting for somebody. You are betting on a hypothetical situation and not necessarily on the reality of what is. They asked this one guy who was there, what he thought about the situation and he said that he thought some people just liked to talk a lot because they liked to hear the sound of their own voice, blah, blah, blah. I knew he was talking about me. So then they got to me and they asked me what I thought about it and asked who I would fire if I could fire anybody at the table. I said that we got eight minutes to make a lasting impression on you to continue this opportunity (which is really the opportunity of a lifetime), so if you don’t step up and do everything in your power to get noticed, then you really shouldn’t be here in the first place. There was this one girl sitting across the table who hadn’t said one word and I said that while I thought she was a very nice person, but I said that I would fire her because she wasn’t talking. The casting lady turned to her and asked her who she would fire and told her that she could fire me if she wanted to, and she said ‘no, I would never fire him, he’d be great!’
As soon as the girl said that, I was like… okay, I got this. They told me to stay behind and they just kept calling me back and calling me back and calling me back. Pretty soon I was in LA, and that was pretty much my goal for the whole thing. I figured that if I could get to LA and make the top 50, I was pretty good. When I got there, the interviews went really well. I had heard that Burnett really murders people in those interviews, but he never said anything rude to me at all.
MJ: So in a backhanded way, you can thank that girl who didn’t fire you back for getting you on the show.
JG: Yeah, pretty much. Thanks to that girl for saying that. It’s strange. I think the reason they chose me is that when I walked into the meeting for the first time, I put out my hand to Mark Burnett and said that my name was John Gafford. He put an M&M in my hand. He didn’t shake my hand, he just put an M&M in there. So I just went into my spiel and then the second time I went in there and did it again, I was walking out and I said ‘oh yeah, by the way if you invest in me, you get back tenfold what you invest’ and I threw a bag of M&M’s at him and I said, ‘thanks for the M&M.’ All the NBC reps started laughing and they told me that I was on the show.
MJ: That is awesome! That is the best casting story that I have ever heard and you know how many of these I do. That is the funniest thing I have ever heard. I can’t even imagine his face.
JG: Yeah, it was pretty funny.
MJ: You were one of the strongest candidates on the show I thought, and the person that I thought was going to win. What happened?
JG: What happened? I continually say that my whole mentality was that I wanted to go the route of Amy (Henry) and I wanted to win every task. That was my whole thought process. I thought that the best way that I could help my team win was constantly putting myself in the line of fire and unfortunately, when you do that, that’s what happens. Unfortunately, in my last task, it seemed like our team just kept winning the wrong contests (if that makes any sense). The mural thing. We had a much better mural. Our mural was awesome, but it wasn’t an art contest. If you want to know the honest truth about why I think we lost that mural task… here it is. Where we lost that mural task was the fact that the focus group came to our mural first. When they said that the focus group was coming to our mural first, I said that wasn’t a controlled situation. I am like what you need to do is split the focus group in half, take half to Magna and the other half to Net Worth and then switch. By bringing them all here, I think it is a very unfortunate situation. You take a bunch of kids and ask if they want to be on this TV show and judge these murals and you bring them to ours first, they all turn into Siskel and Roeper. They were all like, “I think it’s terrible,” “I think it perpetuates blah blah blah…” Then of course, now that they have said something really bad about ours, they have to say something really good.
MJ: I didn’t even think the Magna one was that great.
JG: It was terrible! That’s why if you’ll remember, Tara was sitting there and was like “well, why didn’t you tell me that there were other cities in the game?” and I am like “I thought you knew and I loved your concept.” I would have done exactly the same thing. I stand behind the quality of that mural. Once that task over and we went and did those interviews on the day after you found out whether you won or lost, they kept needling me trying to get me to say bad things about Tara and I am like, I am not going to do it. I still to this day, think that our mural was better. I think our ad was better. The only reason why I think we lost on that task is that she (Tara) wanted a “Tear It Up” tagline and I wanted the tagline “Keeping It Unreal” because it was going from the real world to the unreal world. Other than that, I thought the thing was great.
MJ: Tara told me an interesting story where she said that you were the one that pushed her to become the PM in the first place. Is that true?
JG: On that task? There are a couple of things that kind of screwed me up. Number one, Mr. Trump said on the first day not to decide PM’s by pulling names out of hats. When it comes to these tasks, you kind of look at them and say who is the most qualified to do them. I figured that Tara had done public relations with the Port Authority. This is what she does. She relays messages to people. We figured that our judges would be from Harlem and her being a New Yorker and knowing that neighborhood and being in PR, I figured she was going to be the one best qualified to help us.
MJ: She said that it was also not so much that you wanted her to be the PM, but the fact that you didn’t want other people to be the PM.
JG: Yeah, there’s no doubt about that. At that point in the game, you kind of figure out who you trust and who you don’t and I would go work for Tara tomorrow. Tara’s a brilliant brilliant woman and the first thing that I said to her when I saw her on Friday was that I think she got robbed. They did not show her doing anything. She was the invisible woman. Of course, I got portrayed in a very negative light but I don’t know what’s worse. To give up two months of your life to show people what you can do and not be shown at all, or to get spun in a negative light. I don’t know what’s worse. I told her that I felt terrible for her. She was great. She was awesome.
MJ: So basically you didn’t want to put your fate in the hands of others. So tell me (on your Net Worth team), who you would be comfortable with saying that you wouldn’t mind working under that person and who you wouldn’t feel comfortable with.
JG: At that point or overall?
MJ: Let’s go with at that point.
JG: Okay, at that point, Tara no problem. I would have followed Craig because I think that he would have led in a democratic way. It’s such a fine balance that you have to run with when you are project manager. You have to be somewhat democratic, but you also have to be quick to make decisions. The democratic portion comes from just making sure that every person is heard. You never know when somebody is going to have an idea that needs to be heard. If you allow everybody to speak (which I really did on the Burger King task), and you are firm in your decision-making and you are like ‘this is the direction that we are going,’ and you don’t leave any element of indecision or ‘what if we lose…’ I think that’s the best way to lead. At that point I felt that Tara led decisively. I felt that I led decisively. I felt Angie was excellent by saying ‘what are we going to do.’ That project that we did with the Nescafe thing. Doing a whole vote for what you like better, hot or cold coffee. That was all my idea. The fact that I threw it out there and she accepted it. Just like the Vegas thing. I checked my ego, I think it was Kristen who wanted an idea I heard. I think it’s that ability to have an ego and check that ego when you need to and go with the best decision. I think that’s what makes a good project manager. Brian didn’t have the ability to do that. He wasn’t listening to anybody on the team. He was going to do what he was going to do.
MJ: Well, Brian was gone at that point so who was left? Tana, Audrey…
JG: Well, the whole problem that I had with Audrey was that it’s pretty unfortunate. You know Audrey and I had a pretty decent relationship up until that boardroom. Now here’s an interesting point that I want to mention. If you saw the clip show, Chris and Angie had a much more dramatic blow-out, but Angie acted in her manner and worked it out. You have to understand that you don’t have three days to let s*** blow over. You just don’t have it. If there’s a problem, it needs to be addressed, it needs to be resolved and you need to move on. I thought that it was very interesting that they showed Angie (who is a very mature woman), even though she looked physically scared, she was willing to resolve that issue and put it to bed and the next day go back to work. That actually happened before the situation with Audrey. I think the fact that she was able to act in a mature manner was better for the team.
Audrey got the idea for some reason, that I was trying to get everyone against her on the team.
MJ: Well, that’s what she basically said in her interview. She said that she basically felt that it was the guys against the girls, with you as the ringleader.
JG But it wasn’t at all. Once again, that’s her perception that was totally unfounded. I think she’s done nothing and since she has been doing media, her perception has been a little warped. The thing about it is that when I walked out on the patio and she said “why did you say that I was the weakest link?,” I listed out the 10 things that she had done and screwed up. That anytime she would delegate anything that had any type of responsibility, she screwed it up. This is why. It’s not personal. Nobody is saying anything that’s personal. These are facts. That’s the one thing that I felt that I was always good at, was that I always felt like I spoke in fact and not in opinions. Audrey, when you did the money on the Nescafe task, you didn’t add it up. I reconciled that money in five minutes. I solved that problem in five minutes. They didn’t show me solve it, but I did in five minutes. It just got to a point where nobody trusted her to do anything because everything she did, she screwed up. The Nescafe task, she was in charge of the flyers and the banners and stuff and we told her the night before that she had to get an invoice from the guy because it is very strict in the dossier that no money can leave our hands without an invoice. She just failed to do it. She could have had an invoice faxed to the suite. There was a fax machine there. You saw the next morning, she was sitting there and she gets an invoice from the guy and she sends it to us and it says $6000 for various flyers, banners and stuff. You saw the banner. She did not get the correct dimensions. Our banners looked like that scene in Spinal Tap. You know that scene when the Stonehenge comes down. We were supposed to have these massive banners and instead we had these posters. Then the invoice she sends me says ‘various flyers, posters and stuff… $6000!’ I am like “Audrey, what is this???” Is this good enough for you? The funny thing was that I thought Audrey was great in the first task because she worked as my right-hand man and everything. She took all the notes and she kept all the timelines and she was my right-hand person because if I needed to ask what that guy’s number or what did that guy say, she had all that information right there. She was right there sponging it all in. I thought that she was great after the first task but then, as we went along, everything that she got delegated, kind of went to the tank.
MJ: Couldn’t you make the argument that the reason why she performed so well on that first task is because she was working under you and because you were basically instructing her?
JG: I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. It seemed like everything she touched after that was bad. I mean on the graffiti task. We had to go to the paint store to get paint. We had a huge can of paint (which I am sure that you can guess from the size of that wall) and so I went to talk to Tara on the cell phone outside. When I come back in (and I was on the phone with Tara for like 25 minutes) because I actually got us an RV on site because I knew that it was cold and I knew people were going to want to leave and go to the bathroom and get food. So I actually got us a motorhome on the site which was awesome because it was like our generator, our bathroom, our coffee. Craig, Chris and I actually slept there.
(For Audrey’s take on the motorhome, click here
MJ: Did Magna have a motorhome?
JG: No, they didn’t do that. They just sat outside and froze. We did that and I am on the phone with Tara trying to get this motorhome and I come back in and she is still trying to count the paint and she has got it all over the place. Not organized or anything. I am like STOP! Then we organized the paint by color. Here’s all the orange. Here’s all the white. Here’s all the red. Then we got it done and we were out the door. I actually had the Sony execs deliver a Playstation to the site with the game. On the way back, it was Tana, Craig, Audrey and myself sitting in the van and Audrey goes, “you know, I have been thinking a lot about playing the game and the Sony execs said that if you played the game, you won’t know how to market it.” There was like dead silence in the van and then Tana turns around and goes “Audrey, what? What did you say?” So then Audrey goes, “well, I talked to the Sony execs and they said that if we played the game, we won’t know how to market it.” So then there was dead silence again and then Tana goes to me “Okay… moving on…!” (Laughs).
MJ: It does seem like the cast is anti-Audrey. From the very beginning, almost everybody is unanimously against Audrey from Net Worth and Stephanie from Magna. I guess it wasn’t personal. It was just stuff that she did on the show that is illiciting all of this negativity from you and Kristen.
JG: You can only be as good as your team. When it gets to a point where you have somebody that you can’t delegate anything to and all they do is complain and bitch about everything but you can’t give them anything because they screw it up, it really is unfortunate. Audrey is a very sweet person. She is. I think she has a lot of endearing qualities as a person, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out how she got on the show.
MJ: I am sure you are aware of the problems between Kristen and Audrey. If there were to have a wrestling match, whose corner would you be in?
JG: I think they are both a little guilty of perpetuating. Audrey’s comment of “men love me and boys don’t know how to deal with me”… I mean good god. Just terrible! I suppose if they were going to wrestle and I had to be in somebody’s corner, I’d side with Kristen.
MJ: A lot of people saw you as being one of the most strategic players. Sort of looking at the Apprentice as being like a chess game. Is that how you played it and how important was strategy on the show?
JG: I wish you had seen Audrey’s final boardroom in its entirety because I was told from the producers that it was the finest boardroom performance they’d ever seen. Obviously because I was going the next week, they had to make it a little more drama-filled. I said exactly what I had to in that boardroom before it happened.
MJ: Tell me! You were supposed to tell me a few days ago…
JG: Number one, they said that the marketing was bad, but the reason we lost that task was 100% because of the golf course design. Now a lot of people don’t realize (well, you couldn’t realize because you didn’t see it) that the golf courses were 60 feet apart. I mean it was like walking up, theirs looked great and ours looked terrible and people went to the right. That’s how it worked. I knew what Magna was doing with their marketing ploy and our marketing campaign was going to be very simple. I knew (as soon as I saw the set-up) that it was going to come down to who had the better course and who could hustle better on the street. That’s why our entire marketing concept was that we beat all competitor pricing, including coupons. And we had 27 holes, they had 18. That was our marketing ploy because it was going to come down to hustling on the street. Now, a lot of things went really bad on that task. Number one was after meeting with the vice-president of Chelsea Piers and they said that we should focus all of our marketing inside of Chelsea Piers. We focus on what we got. So even after I told Audrey that, she still wanted us to flyer at churches. At 11, she still wanted to go after people with small children and I am like ‘Audrey, people with small children are already at home.’ The whole thing was that there was never really a budget, but she took Chris with her to develop the golf course and Angie/Craig and I worked on marketing. We worked all day on getting entertainers and stuff. The first big mistake was that Angie (before we found a bunch of clowns) guaranteed this woman $1000 to come out and be a clown for the day. We had that tied up. That’s important because we got the course set-up and we went out and then the next day, when you saw me refusing to put the clown suit on, that had nothing to do with the on-site promotion because I had every intention to put it on for the on-site promotion because I said that if we were doing on-site promotion, the more clowns the merrier.
MJ: They made it seem like you had problems with it at the beginning.
JG: Well, what she (Audrey) wanted Craig and I to do, was to put our clown suits on and walk the streets of New York looking for children.
MJ: (Laughs).
JG: I think she was trying to get me fired, but trying to get me arrested was something completely different. I mean walking around New York in a clown suit looking for kids. That’s just not cool. I mean honestly. Would you walk around the streets of New York in a clown suit, looking for kids?
MJ: (Laughing hysterically). That’s gold!
JG: No, no you wouldn’t! Long story short. There was no money left over for us to hire a street team. We had no street promotion because we had no money. We could have gotten one, but they spent all the money. Basically, it boiled down to them having people all over their event hustling people to go to their golf course and we were left with just basically the seven of us. Audrey decides to send Craig and I off on this wild goose chase where we walked 27 blocks in New York City (not in a clown suit, because I refused to do it) finding kids. Even the people that we found that did come down, went to the other team’s course because it looked so much better. The lady in the clown suit that Angie had cancelled on, was threatening to sue us. So while Craig and I are walking the streets, a producer comes up to me and says you gotta get back. I am like why. They’re like, “you’re fixing to lose this task.” And I am like “why?” They’re like this lady is fixing to sue you and if you don’t have money to get it done, we’re going to disqualify you. So we go back. Right in the middle of our task, Angie and Audrey have to leave for like two hours to go and return a bunch of stuff that we had bought to get enough money to go and pay this woman. Now, we’re down two again when Angie and Audrey were gone. We just didn’t have enough bodies. When I walked back to the task, Tana’s walking up to me and I asked her how it was going. She told me that the other people were taking our people. So Craig and I put on our suits and we went to work. It was so funny during the first time that Kendra was pulling people over to their course, and I was like “I’ll let you play our course right now for $1.” Those people just turned right around and came to our course and the look on Kendra’s face was priceless. I think Erin said, “how can you win if you only charge $1.” I am like, “you’re missing the point. That was a $5 swing at my team.” The task was to only win the task by $1 so if I was taking people from them, we were winning. The thing that bothered me the most was that they made it look like I didn’t work. We hustled like crazy, it was just too little, too late. We didn’t have a street team. Going into the boardroom, I knew a couple of things.
Number one, I knew I had to get Chris off the hook because Chris was one of the designers. Chris and Audrey designed it. I knew I had to get Chris off the hook. I sat down and I made a huge deal about this contract. I said that money was mismanaged. We didn’t have money for a street team. Right in the middle of the task, our project manager and Angie leave for two hours. I made this huge deal about the contract which was probably a much bigger deal than it needed to be. I needed to make sure that Audrey brought Angie in the boardroom. See, people didn’t understand why she did that. It’s because I absolutely forced her hand to do it because I made such a big deal about the contract and them being gone. See, because now Audrey has to bring in Angie.
MJ: Yeah, because that made no sense at all. I thought that the reason she brought her in was to help her case against you.
JG: Now, I have forced Audrey to bring in Angie which means she can’t bring in Chris. So then, as soon as I know she’s going to bring in Angie. I said, she brings Angie in because it will help her case and they got this mom-daughter vibe going on. They’ll do whatever the other one does. Now Angie, who’s smart and has seen the show before knows that she can’t vote with her friend because Trump will think that the only reason she is saying what she is saying is because they are friends. Now I have forced Angie to go against Angie. Now that I know Chris is off the hook, I was sitting there and listening to them talk about how bad our golf course was and I start harping on the idea that when you walk up to a hot dog stand, do you buy the day-old one or the one right off the grill? Our product looked like hell. Audrey can’t really talk about that, because she couldn’t blame it on Chris (because he wasn’t there). I asked Audrey who the best designer was on our team and she said Angie. I am like, why didn’t Angie design the golf course? Why was she off making phone calls? Mr. Trump looked across the desk and asked if Angie was the best designer on the team. Audrey goes ‘no.’ Then that was it. It was done. Getting Chris off the hook ensured that Angie was there and turning Angie against Audrey by forcing her hand and saying they were best friends, dropping the hammer and saying why Angie wasn’t involved in designing the golf course… that’s why Audrey got fired.
MJ: That’s fascinating.
JG: Yeah, I was really disappointed that they didn’t show that.
MJ: I would have never known that. My final question. Who do you like the most, like the least, would fire next and would ultimately hire to be your Apprentice?
JG: Like the most? I am going to go with Bren. That another interesting thing, had I been there another week they probably would have shown it. Bren and I were best friends in the suite, even though we were never on the same team. At the end of every task, Bren and I would meet out on the patio, drink bourbon and talk about what went wrong and what went right and help each other out in the boardroom. To the point where people on our team were like, I don’t feel comfortable with you talking to Bren. The producers were fascinated. They said, ‘we’ve never had this where people from opposite teams are like the best friends in the suite.’ They never showed any of our relationship ever. I talk to Bren everyday. I talk to Chris every two days. I talk to Erin a lot. I talk to Danny a lot. I talk to Tara a lot. I talk to Tarshi every now and again. Brian calls every once in a blue moon.
MJ: Like the least?
JG: It’s not really a matter of like or dislike. It’s just who I choose to associate with and the only people who if I never see again, I would be fine with that would be Audrey and Stephanie. Other than that, I am good with everybody.
MJ: Would fire next?
JG: I would definitely fire Stephanie next, because in my boardroom, what you didn’t get to see was that Mr. Trump said that I would fire Stephanie because I heard she was terrible. She busted everything she touched.
MJ: Ultimately hire as your apprentice?
JG: The biggest two competitors that I had in the house and we were all trying to figure out how we could get on the same team were Kendra and Alex. I figured if Alex and I got on the same team, it would have been like world domination. It would have been unbelievable. We would have been unstoppable. Mixing the teams really hurt us. If I could have gotten over there, it would have been great. A lot of people judge people on personalities and I don’t judge anybody on personality. I judge them strictly on the quality of their work and ideas.
MJ: That’s funny because Tara said that she would fire Alex next, and you say you would hire him. Interesting dynamic.
JG: That’s interesting, I have no idea. There is one more thing that I would like to talk about. Somebody did something to me that is so unforgivable and this person is so far on my s***list and nothing they can ever say to me will get them off of it. Jen C. from Season 2 wrote a scathing personal attack on my character in her NBC column. I mean absolutely scathing. I was so angry when I read it because here is a person, who if there is anybody on the globe, in the entire world that should totally understand the power of editing to give you a perception that you are different than how you actually are, it’s this person. This girl was painted as a racist and an anti-Semite, to the point where she lost her job. To lambaste my character on what she saw on a TV show, knowing full-well how those clips are utilized to create the best dialogue. It made me so angry. This woman has either one of two things that is her problem. Number one, she’s either so desperate to cling to her 15 minutes of fame that she is willing to push me down to advance her name or number two, she is just too ignorant to remember what happened to her six months ago. I was so angry at that woman. It’s on NBC which is a huge issue. It’s unforgivable, the irresponsibility that she used in writing that article. Unforgivable.
