NBC: Donald Trump will never return to Apprentice
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Donald Trump better win the election, because he will “never” be allowed back on Celebrity Apprentice, NBC’s top executive says.
EW asked NBC entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt after NBC’s execution session on the Television Critics Association tour in Beverly Hills on Tuesday if Trump could return to the show if he loses his presidential bid in November.
“No,” Greenblatt said firmly. “He would never be back on Celebrity Apprentice, as long as I’m here.”
Recently when asked about making sacrifices in his life, Trump noted he gave up two seasons of appearing on Apprentice to run for office.
Greenblatt’s entertainment president, asked separately, hedged her reply to the same question, however.”I have no idea,” Jennifer Salke said. “I have no idea what our response would be. With him, we’re taking one day at a time and seeing where he ends up and watching this unfold like all of you. We’re not involved in his life.”
Greenblatt was also asked by reporters about the consequences of having boosted Trump’s celebrity profile over the years.
“I think it’s certainly interesting, and we do talk about it,” Greenblatt said. “Bedtime for Bonzo helped Reagan, sort of, become a national prominent figure. Gary Trudeau was predicting that Donald Trump would run for president 15 years ago, before he was on The Apprentice. So you know, we were happy to have a show that was doing really well with a guy who was a big TV star, and it’s impossible to predict where it goes from there. I think it’s surprised all of us that he would want to do this, but I guess that’s what ‘s great about this country. But I don’t think that there’s really that much of a correlation, one to the other. I think he’s been a prominent figure for so many years that it’s probably not surprising that he would embark on this kind of journey, but it is interesting that he was on the show for so long and now he’s sort of on the national stage the way he is.”
NBC and Trump had a spectacular breakup last year after the real estate tycoon declared his presidential bid, including severing ties with Trump’s beauty pagents.
For the next edition of Celebrity Apprentice, premiering in 2017, NBC tapped former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to host the show.
For more news out of NBC’s day at TCA, go here.
More to come…
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