Class of ’68 ’93 ’95 | So far, it’s gone like this: One Penn alum has fired another on national TV, while a third is still hoping to get that “dream job of a lifetime” with the “hefty six-figure salary.” Just another season for The Apprentice, NBC’s adjective-defying reality show.
The one doing the firing is Donald Trump W’68, boss of The Trump Organization as well as the show’s star and executive producer. He evaluates the contestants, who numbered 18 at the start of the second season and have endured such “rigorous business tasks” as opening a restaurant and picking and selling products for QVC Shopping Network.
The one fired is Pamela Day C’93, who got canned on Episode Five shortly after Trump plucked her from one team of contestants and told her to lead the other team. She had already told Entertainment Weekly—jokingly, she insists—that she should win because she is “much more qualified, far better looking, and a little bit taller, I think, as well.”
Day told the Gazette that the show was “a great marketing tool for the companies I run”—Blazent, Inc., and Crimson Holdings— and that she had agreed to be a contestant “not for a job with D.T., but rather to compete in a business challenge and to market my companies.”
Still in the running is contestant Kevin Allen W’95, who “gave up his pursuit of a professional football career when his brother was diagnosed with leukemia,” according to NBC; founded a software company; and is earning his law degree at the University of Chicago.
“I’m the smartest and most talented and most qualified,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “This is a job interview, and job interviews are about getting the best candidate.” He told NBC that the most important thing he learned from the first season of The Apprentice was that “D.T. takes no sh*t.”
Stay … tuned?
—S.H.
