Donald Trump Felt Competitive With Sylvester Stallone, ‘The Apprentice’ Book Reveals: Trump Told People Stallone ‘Couldn’t Remember His Lines’ and ‘Wasn’t Good at Making TV’
At TV market Mipcom, Ramin Setoodeh, Variety‘s co-editor-in-chief, spoke on Wednesday about how Donald Trump’s public persona was forged by reality TV series “The Apprentice,” and how it is that “character” who is running for the U.S. presidency today.
Speaking in a session inspired by his New York Times bestseller “Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass,” Setoodeh said: “‘The Apprentice’ is an origin story for Donald Trump’s political years.”
More from Variety
As research for the book, Setoodeh interviewed Trump six times after his presidential term ended, as well as interviewing more than 50 key players involved in “The Apprentice.” He also drew on other conversations with Trump before he became president.
Setoodeh argued that the lessons Trump learned making the show still guide him. “Donald Trump views the world through the lens of reality TV,” Setoodeh said. “He’s a reality TV star, not a politician, and he sees the entire landscape of the White House, of the political world, essentially as a reality TV set where he can get attention, he can generate drama and he can get ratings, which is very, very important to him.”
One recurrent theme in the Trump interviews is his obsession with celebrity. Setoodeh explained that while Trump was hosting “The Apprentice,” Burnett also produced “The Contender” with Sylvester Stallone as the host. This caused Trump to become obsessively jealous to the extent that he’d tell people “Sylvester Stallone wasn’t as good at making TV” and that he “couldn’t remember his lines, couldn’t deliver the words to the prompter.”
Even after his presidency, Trump would repeatedly tell Setoodeh: “Sylvester Stallone wasn’t as good as me; Mark Burnett said I was better than Sylvester Stallone at being a reality star.” Setoodeh added: “I just think we need to let this sink in: Donald Trump has been president for four years, he’s been leader of the free world for those four years, and what he’s still fixated on was the fact that he was a better reality star than Sylvester Stallone.”
His behavior on the show also pointed to how he would behave as a politician. Setoodeh said: “There was inappropriate behavior. There were boundaries that were crossed. He got very close to some of the female contestants. He flirted with them a little bit. He said inappropriate things about them. So really, ‘The Apprentice’ is an origin story for Donald Trump’s political years, and you see how he became the president that he became through his conduct on the show.”
“The Apprentice” creator Mark Burnett and NBC honcho Jeff Zucker can take credit or blame for creating the Trump persona. “They did create this Frankenstein of Donald Trump,” Setoodeh said, observing that through his persona on the show Trump became “this folk hero in a weird way for blue collar workers.” However, the man they thought was real was “a manufactured image that was created in the editing room by Mark Burnett, and that, I think, is what is so fascinating about Donald Trump. He was created. He was a mirage that was created by reality TV.”
However, Trump’s political power ultimately is derived from the American people, Setoodeh said. “There’s this dark side in which people believe that what they saw in the show was real, and if not for Donald Trump, there probably would have been another reality star president.”
Best of Variety
Sign up for Variety's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.