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How Donald Trump Demanded NBC Pay Him A Hefty Amount To Host ‘The Apprentice’
Imagine wanting to jump from $25,000 an episode to $6 million, but that’s Donald Trump for you. According to journalist Ramin Setoodeh, the former President hatched a brilliant plan to become one of the highest paid stars in TV during his reality TV run.
To gather information on the book, Setoodeh reportedly interviewed Trump from May 21 through November 2023. They talked about Trump’s experience as a reality TV host and his relationship with NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Zucker. Reportedly, a lot of false and misleading statements were made by Trump during the cause of the interview.
The book’s excerpt revealed that Trump tried to use ‘Friends’ falling ratings to earn a big payday following the dismal $25,000 per episode he was paid to host the first season of ‘The Apprentice.’
At the time, Trump pointed out that ‘The Apprentice’ had comparable ratings to ‘Friends’ and even performed better than some of the show’s episodes. (Context tells us that the final season of ‘Friends’ was actually shorter than the previous ones and the network ran reruns to build excitement for the finale.)
Driven on by the reality that ‘The Apprentice’ was going tow-to-tow with ‘Friends,” one of the biggest sitcoms of its time, Trump set out to get himself a bigger payday.
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“Friends had six people,” Trump told Setoodeh. “They’re getting $1 million an episode each. That’s $6 million. So if they’re getting $6 million, and I have higher ratings than they do—because this is the end of Friends, and they were fading out—I said, ‘You should pay me $6 million an episode.’ “
He claimed the studio did not only deny his request, but told him they didn’t want to continue working with him.
“I said, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do. Give me something less than six. If you’re paying Friends six, and I have higher ratings than Friends, you should pay me six! But give me something less than that. I’m reasonable,’ “ Trump claimed.
This apparently drove them “nuts,” in Trump’s own terms, with Zucker calling him to say, “We’re not doing it… We already have someone else lined up.”
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Trump recalled: “I thought the deal was dead. I thought I just killed myself. They walked out—they were so angry. I said, ‘That’s all right! Get somebody else.'”
However, Zucker surprised him by calling the next day and offering him a deal he said was “a fortune.”
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