Donald Trump once got into a heated back and forth with former NBC exec Jeff Zucker over his salary on The Apprentice.
The controversial businessman felt like the $25,000 per episode that he made on the first season was humiliating and demanded a substantial pay raise for season two of the hit reality competition show.
Trump's negotiations for a second season took place as NBC’s biggest hit, Friends, was getting ready to end after ten seasons.
In the forthcoming book Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass, the ex-president claimd that he knew the network was desperate to keep him.
“They were really in the basement, and we brought them back — big league!” he said.
While Friends still outperformed The Apprentice overall that season, Trump gleefully noted that some weeks his reality show did "top the charts." This was due to the final season of Friends only having eighteen episodes — six episodes fewer than the previous few seasons had been — while The Apprentice was new each week. Trump considered it a win, no matter what the circumstances.
“Friends had six people,” Trump was quoted in the book. “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.’”
The New York businessman's pitch was met with shock and disbelief by the network. Trump said, “They went f------ crazy.”
Zucker, who Trump referred to as "human scum," specifically, became vocally angry that the New York billionaire would even consider asking for such an unfeasible payday. The second season of The Apprentice had fifteen episodes, meaning if the network had met Trump’s demands, he would have made $90 million for three months of playing himself in the boardroom.
The network was still toying with the idea of swapping out The Apprentice’s star every season, a maneuver it couldn’t easily have pulled with Lisa Kudrow or Matt LeBlanc.
But NBC was in a hurry. In the early spring of 2004, with season 1 still airing, the network had begun scouting contestants for a second season of their newest TV phenomenon so they could quickly bring The Apprentice back in the fall.
Trump ended up counteroffering his own offer. His strategy was to leave the door open to see what NBC would bring back to the negotiating table.
“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’s erratic maneuvering reportedly didn’t sit well with Zucker, "They went nuts,” the billionaire recalled. “They said, ‘We’re going to get someone else.’”
He knew that he’d alienated Zucker when the NBC boss called him personally to tell him, “We’re not doing it.”
The exec allegedly told Trump, “We already have someone else lined up.”
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In Trump’s version of events, he emerged victorious, claiming that Zucker gave him what he wanted — not $6 million an episode, but a substantial increase in his per episode salary.
“The end result is Jeff called back like a day later, and said, ‘We got to make a deal.’ I said, ‘Why? You couldn’t get somebody else?’ He said, ‘No. We’ve got to make a deal,'" Trump recalled. "And I agreed to a fortune. You know, they paid a lot of money. A lot! It was a great experience.”
Vanity Fair provided quotes and sources used in this article.