An 'Apprentice' Candidate Remembers Trump's Can't-Win Sexism
In 2007, I was a contestant on the sixth season of The Apprentice, the last regular edition before Donald Trump pivoted from pitting MBAs against each other to staging kangaroo courts between the likes of Gene Simmons and Nadia Comaneci. The show was modeled as a grueling fourteen-week interview, from which only the most shrewd, professional, and business-savvy candidate would be selected to serve at Trump's pleasure in his global hotel, steak and MacPaint-designed water empire.
I have watched with great interest over the past week as he has vigorously defended himself from accusations of sexism and sexual assault, some lobbed at him from Apprentice alumni. He and his team have attempted many defenses, but no matter what form they take (locker room talk, the women are too ugly to harass, etc.), Trump wants it known that "Nobody has more respect for women than me!" His intractably loyal daughter Ivanka said, "He views all people equally-men or women, it doesn't matter-and he treats them accordingly."
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I was the eighth person to be fired in my season, which meant I was around for the taping of nine out of fourteen episodes, including the finale. This gave me plenty of time to observe Trump's perspective, which was anything but gender blind. While I did not witness any sexual assault, I did watch Trump treat and talk about women in ways that were such textbook examples of how to create a hostile workplace environment that they could be used as "What Not to Do" sections of an HR sexual harassment video. Perhaps this is Trump's way to "Make HR great again!", bringing it back to the more halcyon days when women either quietly accepted sexist treatment or found another place to work.
So come with me back to 2006 to revisit Trump in his natural habitat: Taking women who are in a position of needing to impress him and making them deeply nervous. [Note: Many Trump followers have defended his pre-2016 alleged gropings and Tic-Tac-abetted tongue thrusts by saying that even if they were true, they happened before he was in politics. To which I would note that on the first day of filming my L.A.-set season, Trump and his wife Melania took all the members of my team to Spago. During this meal he told the table that he was considering running for President of the United States in 2016, "probably against my friend Hillary Clinton" and that he'd beat her badly. When I asked why he wouldn't run against Clinton in 2008, he waved off my question with a dismissive hand gesture, said something about it being too soon and repeated "2016." Therefore, anything he said since 2006 can be looked at in the context of a person planning a political campaign.]
The Apprentice was strenuously framed to us as a job interview, not a reality show. The producers never interrupted our conversations except when one of us would make the mistake of using the word "show." We would quickly be pulled aside and reminded that this was not a "show." This wasn't The Real World, The Bachelor or one of the docuseries explicitly known to be about sex, dating, and interpersonal relationships: It was a "job interview." We were frequently reminded that we were there to represent Donald Trump and the Trump organization, which meant acting professionally at all times-which was completely at odds with the way that Trump would speak to and about us.
Such a conundrum: Is it better to be portrayed as a sexy, frivolous candidate, or a serious prude of a candidate?
The new sunnier, sexier L.A. filming location lent itself to such reality show staples as having a pool and hot tub in our backyard. It is a reality-TV rule that all contestants must lose their minds upon first seeing their temporary housing, regardless of whether said contestants live in as nice or nicer a home in their regular lives. When we first saw the pool we did our duty and acted batshit for the cameras, while some of us were privately concerned that the pool might be a trap. Many of the women refused to put on a bathing suit, saying it would make them look unprofessional. Some women, like myself, were worried we'd be scrutinized for our bodies. Trump had already commented on our looks many times during auditions, and wearing a bikini on the show would just open us up to further judgment about our physical appearance. Such a conundrum: Is it better to be portrayed as a sexy, frivolous candidate, or a serious prude of a candidate?
Trump talked about the female contestants' appearances almost every time he was on set.
Producers zeroed in on those fears, asking us in our confessionals if we thought certain women were unprofessional based on their choice to get in the pool or not. They also asked us who we thought looked best in a bathing suit and if we thought wearing a bikini would impress Mr. Trump. (I was never asked any of these questions about the men's bathing suits or their choice whether or not to go swimming.) After many circuitous attempts to solve this zen koan of sexism, I grew annoyed that I was put in this confusing position, said "Fuck this noise" and ended up wearing a bathing suit so as not to preemptively cower from potential body shaming. I was one of two women to do so in the promo shoot, which admittedly made for an odd job-interview tableau.
Trump talked about the female contestants' appearances almost every time he was on set. If he was in a good mood he would compliment the female cast members and say things like, "Don't the women look beautiful today?", "Wow, take a look at them" and "Don't they look good?" (I never heard him make similar physical assessments of the men, no "Nice suit" or "Check out the gun show!") But with great beauty comes great danger: Trump would follow up comments about our looks with warnings that he was on to our manipulative ways. He told me I was attractive but to "watch out" because I was "the most articulate one" and a "real killer." He liked to position our softer and more feminine qualities against our potential to hurt someone; he seemed both enthralled with and wary of women. Personally, I was more amused than offended by Trump's flirtatious nature. What made them problematic to me was that they were compliments we could not refuse. To reject his flattery was to risk facing the oversensitive wrath of an offended Donald Trump.
Compliments from Trump were always a mixed bag. Trump seemed very into Kristine Lefebvre, then an L.A.-based attorney, and told her that she was hot-but she would be hotter without her tattoos. He focused a lot on her body and her personal life, commenting loudly about her physique and her marriage to future celebrity chef Ludo Lefebvre. He questioned her ability to be both a hard worker and a wife, accusing her of never being able to commit to both a husband and a demanding career.
He repeatedly reminded us that contestant Heidi Androl, at the time a helicopter-parts saleswoman who was fired in the second-to-last episode, was very attractive and looked like a model. Many of us started to feel like he wanted Heidi to win whether she did the best job or not. Even when she screwed up, she still received praise from Trump and was credited for our wins, so we gave up on trying to compete directly with her. If she made a mistake, the common boardroom strategy on our team was "Well, he wants to bang Heidi so we better blame someone else for the loss."
"So you're not attracted to my daughter?" he asked disbelievingly. "So Ivanka does nothing for you?"
Our reward for winning an early task was a visit to the Playboy mansion, complete with a meet-and-greet with Hugh Hefner and a party thrown in our honor. When the victor was my team, at that point comprised of six women and two men, Trump bemoaned that the reward was being wasted on what he called "a team of women and a gay guy." (Derek Arteta was indeed gay, but Trump didn't even acknowledge that our team had a second male teammate, Surya Yalamanchili. The thin, studious Surya was a regular target of Trump's disdain as he did not fit the mold of the bro-y male candidates who comprised the bulk of the other team, and for whom a trip to the Playboy mansion would have inspired countless thunderous high-fives.) Off camera but within our earshot, I heard Trump say that he had wanted to reward the other guys by giving them a shot at a potential hook-up.
To Trump, there is no greater treasure than a beautiful woman, and he can't imagine anyone not sharing his values. During our initial Spago dinner, our host had been shocked upon learning that Derek was gay. "So you're not attracted to my daughter?" he asked disbelievingly. "So Ivanka does nothing for you?" (Fun fact: Ivanka was not at the dinner, but Melania was, sitting next to her husband. So even with his beautiful wife one seat away, he held up his daughter as the standard bearer of hotness to test for gayness in men. But I digress.)
Upon arrival at the Playboy mansion, we were greeted by Hugh Hefner's three "girlfriends," as seen on The Girls Next Door: Kendra Wilkinson, Holly Madison, and Bridget Marquardt. The three were giddily excited to see us, and bounced up against a proprietary Hef for the cameras. Later, when we all sat with a genial Hef in his home as he held court, the three women flicked off their inner light switches, and seemed somewhat depressed and sad. I would soon relate to these next-door girls and the pressure to seem overly happy and grateful to be in the presence of an old rich white dude whenever cameras turned on.
I will admit that I was excited about the prize, and thought it would be fun to see this iconic, last bastion of benevolent sexism, the Disney World of misogyny. But the same dilemma remained: Was a trip to the Playboy mansion appropriate for a female job candidate-or, for that matter, anyone involved in a job interview? This was a moot point, as reward trips were not optional. We were expected to attend all events or face consequences, both contractually and substantively: Stay home and you risked that most fiendish of reality-TV punishments-an unflattering edit.
A few hours into the party, Kristine Lefebvre and I were standing among many half-naked women by the famous Playboy grotto when Trump joined us and shortly initiated some of his patented locker room talk. He started talking about our bodies, comparing them to the bunnies'. Ours were beautiful, he appraised, maybe even better than the bunnies'; staring at our chests, he confidently declared that we didn't even need "the enhancements." I wasn't offended by his observations, I was more amused by how he's not the breast expert he thinks he is. (Incidentally, one year later Kristine was on the cover of Playboy, though this is something Kristine says she arranged with Hugh Hefner independent of Trump.)
He wants you to be sexy, but only if he thinks you are sexy. Otherwise you're being gross and desperate.
The ultimate Catch-22 of being a woman on Trump's The Apprentice came in the second episode, when we were tasked to create a line of swimsuits for Trina Turk that would be modeled at a runway show. The teams were purposely not assigned enough models to exhibit the entire lines, so a male and female contestant on each team had to volunteer to model suits.
Later, in the boardroom, Trump teased the male modelers a little, but generally left them alone. Having the men model seemed like a fun gag to him, but the women's struts were serious business. After seeing Kristine model her swimsuit, Trump had gone backstage to visit her and said, "Oh, my God! Who would have known that body was under there? You should be a model." Later, in the boardroom, he praised those who did get suited up, but subjected those who didn't to a chastising inquisition: Why didn't they want to model? What was the problem? He seemed personally wounded by this decision to maintain professionalism. And yet, he turned on Kristine, whom he'd just ogle-praised at the runway, interrogating her as to why she did volunteer for this task. It was a typically confusing Trump situation where you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. He wants you to be sexy, but only if he thinks you are sexy. Otherwise you're being gross and desperate.
Ten years ago, I bristled at the producers' constant refrain that The Apprentice wasn't a show, it was a job interview. But as new revelations about Donald Trump's behavior toward women arise every day, it's become clear that the producers weren't lying: Our experience on The Apprentice was indeed a typical Donald Trump job interview.
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