‘The Apprentice’ Producers Recall Trump’s Office Stench That “Followed Them Like an Invisible Cloud”

When TV producers first stepped into Donald Trump's office in Trump Tower, they were hit by an odd smell. The team was there to check out the set for a new show called The Apprentice. "The first thing they noticed was the stench, a musty carpet odor that followed them like an invisible cloud," write Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig in their new book Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success. The smell was just the start of their surprises. The producers saw chipped furniture and old-fashioned decor, which felt like stepping back in time. This wasn't what they expected from a billionaire's office.

Bill Pruitt, one of the producers, remembers it well. "When you go into the office and you're hearing 'billionaire,' even 'recovering billionaire,' you don't expect to see chipped furniture," he said. "You don't expect to smell carpet that needs to be refreshed in the worst, worst way," as per HuffPost. The whole scene didn't match up with Trump's image. Another producer, Alan Blum, put it simply: "The whole thing was absurd to all of us." But the producers had a job to do and I was to make Trump look good for the show. Jonathon Braun, another producer, explained their task: "Our job was to make him look legitimate, to make him look like there was something behind it, even though we pretty much all knew that there wasn't—but that was our job," as per The New York Times.

The team rented space on a different floor of Trump Tower. They hired a set designer to create a fancy boardroom. They made apartments for the contestants. All of this was to build the right image for the show. Mark Burnett, the show's creator, paid Trump almost half a million dollars a year for the new space. It was a big investment, but it was necessary to create the right look.

The producers also had to deal with Trump's unpredictable behavior. Sometimes he would fire contestants for no clear reason. But this unpredictability actually worked well for TV. It made the show more exciting. "Right then we knew that we had a show, because this is not what you expected," said Katherine Walker, one of the producers.

The Apprentice became a huge hit. Millions of people watched it every week. Trump became more famous than ever and the show changed how people saw Trump. Before, many people didn't like him but after the show, half of Americans had a good opinion of him. The producers had done their job well. The team carefully edited the footage to show him in the best light. If he made a bad decision, they would find ways to make it look smart. "Our job then was to reverse engineer the show and to make him not look like a complete moron," Braun explained. All this work paid off.