“You’re Fired!”
Donald Trump has become accustomed to saying these words, both on his hit NBC TV show The Apprentice and in the business world. “It’s nothing personal. It’s just business,” is one of the main catchphrases of the show. But with a group of contestants desperate for a shot at a job after being hit hard by the economy, Trump said it made firing people that much harder.
“It’s one thing to fire a celebrity that did a lousy job or was lazy,” Trump said. “You know they still make plenty of money in the outside world. To me it’s harder to fire somebody where you know they’re going back to nothing, they had nothing when they came. They put up a good fight in some cases, in some cases less of a good fight, in some cases an unbelievable fight.”
Season 10 of The Apprentice which premiered last night follows three consecutive seasons of the celebrity versions of the show. Now the contestants have returned to being real people fighting for the ultimate job – a six-figure salary working with Donald Trump.
“So many people wanted to see this show reflective of the current (economic) times and that’s what we’ve done,” Trump said. “I mean we have people that went to the best schools and they don’t have a job.”
In casting, executive producer Mark Burnett (“Survivor,” “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?”) said they made it clear that they did not want people who were feeling sorry for themselves and instead wanted to cast highly-skilled workers who had either lost a job or couldn’t find one.
“The common factor in the casting of the show was people who wanted to fight back,” Burnett said.
It wasn’t any trouble finding contestants willing to fight the economy and push themselves to become the next Apprentice. Burnett said it was during casting that he and the other show executives truly felt compassionate for the applicants going through rough economic times.
“Donald and I and the NBC executives all said ‘Boy, it sure is great to have a job,'” Burnett said. “You know, they’ve really got issues, they’ve got children to feed, they’ve got mortgages to try and pay, they’ve had to sell their possessions and here they are really trying to get themselves back and going.”
Instead of lavish prizes and rewards that winning teams have received in seasons past, Burnett said this season will allow winning Project Managers to meet with CEOs and executives that could potentially help them earn a job.
“You know it’s like a motivational speech from winners to give these people a chance and it’s amazing how they come out of these rewards energized,” Burnett said.
While the essential format of the show is the same and one or more contestants will be fired each week, Trump said there is a different feeling to this season – one that is uplifting but also sad.
“They are in not a good position right now and it’s very different from the original Apprentice in that in those cases they were all high flyers and they wanted to fly even higher,” Trump said. “And in this case they were high flyers, but they’re down and out. They’re really in trouble and it’s about coming back and how to come back.”
One thing is for sure – the contestant who shows the most fight will be Trump’s ultimate Apprentice.
“The fighting back thing, you know it really is what America stands for. Don’t sit down when this is happening, fight back,” Burnett said.
