Lord Sugar’s ‘inappropriate’ axed gags, savage stitch-ups & audition hell… The Apprentice’s best-kept secrets revealed
LOCKING horns with the man deciding whether she’d earn fame and fortune, Sam Saadet was told: “I’m going to give you a thousand reasons not to go on The Apprentice.”
It was part of a brutal audition process the Essex mum, 34, faced even before battling it out against cut-throat entrepreneurs to win Lord Alan Sugar’s £250,000 investment last year.
Now as the BBC show, which celebrates 20 years on air, returns to screens this Thursday, Sam shares surprising behind-the-scenes secrets from the show in an exclusive interview with The Sun.
She tells us about bizarre tactics to stop contestants from bonking or even making friends, claims tasks are “rigged” with cunning restrictions that affect everything from what they can do to bartering and who they can approach.
Sam also reveals the “banana skins” that make candidates look stupid, that Lord Sugar’s jokes are sometimes “so inappropriate” that producers write down quips for him, and how participants are “brainwashed” by the show’s ultra-extreme rules.
“I quickly understood The Apprentice was 90 per cent reality TV and 10 per cent business,” said the TV star and founder of The Mummy Movement.
“Behind the scenes, it’s so, so intense but when you watch it back it’s an hour and it’s laughable half of the time.
“When you’re in the process it feels like life and death, it’s crazy and almost feels like they brainwash you.
“The process is there to keep your head in the game and stress levels are so high. It’s like you’re on SAS: Who Dares Wins, not The Apprentice.
“It was so over the top, even now when I look back I think it’s ridiculous, you’ve got to have your wits about you 24-7 in the process.”
Glam mum Sam pitched her pre-and-post-natal health, fitness and lifestyle app when she appeared on the TV show last year and survived without hearing “You’re fired” until the sixth task.
But she tells us even the audition process was “extremely vigorous”, revealing there were seven stages to the full-day process that saw them take on a variety of tasks.
“It was hardcore but it was a way to test your competitiveness and your mental ability, how you will do in the process and if you will cope,” she explains.
The tasks ranged from assembling flat-pack furniture to verbally sparring over their position in a line-up for ‘who was the most successful?’.
There were multiple interrogations about their motivations for going on the show, their business and what they could offer Lord Sugar.
Each stage was punctuated by a chaperone tapping them on the shoulder and leading them into a lobby in silence where their fate was decided.
“They say absolutely nothing, I’m a blabbermouth and was trying to make small talk but they wouldn’t say a word,” Sam tells us.
“It was silent, they put you in a lift and pressed a button that either sends you up if you’re through to the next round or down if you’re not.”
There’s no compensation or money apart from that, so long as you haven’t broken rules or anything like that. So you are out of pocket going on The Apprentice
Sam Saadet, The Mummy Movement Founder
Sam recalls waiting in silence for hours between the tasks. She says there were “quite a few of the boys” from her season in her group and suspects clashing with Onyeka Nweze got her on the show.
“We had an argument because she put herself up for project manager and I thought she was doing it badly, so we had it out,” she says.
“It’s probably one of the reasons they hired us, they thought ‘These two are feisty, we’ll get them on together so that they clash on screens’.
“I remember seeing Jack [Davies] and thinking, ‘They’re gonna love him on camera’ and with Tre [Lowe], I could tell he knew what he was talking about.”
‘Like SAS: Who Dares Wins’
In the final part, Sam saw her personality and business “picked apart” before they made a last-ditch attempt to encourage auditionees to pull out of the process.
“They almost push you to be like, ‘no way’,” she recalls. “The producer told me, ‘I’m going to give you a thousand reasons to say no to the show’.
“They say, you’ll be cut off from your friends and family, have your phone and passport taken away, you’ll be woken up at the crack of dawn at 3am and be up until 11pm, you won’t be in the real world.
“All of this is the actual truth. You’ll be exhausted, feel like you’re treated like a child, and have to do things over and over again. If you survive all that, that’s when you are ready.
“I was like, ‘That’s fine, bring it on’. It felt like they were covering their backs so that people couldn’t be like, ‘I didn’t know how hard it would be’ or ‘You never told me that’.”
Sam says there’s a few weeks’ wait before candidates find out if they have made it onto the show while they perform background checks looking for “misdemeanours, convictions and dodgy stuff on social media”.
Filming takes place between April and May, eight months prior to the show airing, meaning all candidates are sworn to secrecy via non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), as are the family and limited friends in their “circle of trust”. They also have back-up participants.
Sam says everyone is paid a £1,000 flat fee for the time when the show airs and only if they don’t violate their NDA, as well as a £500 clothing allowance.
Do you know what? Even if we had any banter about anything of the slightest, they’d say ‘Enough of that!
Sam
“There’s no compensation or money apart from that, so long as you haven’t broken rules or anything like that. So you are out of pocket going on The Apprentice,” she tells us.
“You have to get all your outfits too, I must have bought 100 different ones and sent off 20, of which half were approved. Going back and forth to the shops and sending stuff back was a process in itself.
“Your clothes can’t clash with any of the other women, that’s why everyone’s outfits are so bright. I sent grey and cream suits but they told me it would look flat on TV.”
Contestants are forced to surrender their phones, credit cards and passports when filming begins and when they want a haircut or nails done, the company has to be signed off by production and they must visit the house.
Sam says: “You can’t call your mate and get them to do it. Whatever the person is charging, you’re paying it. I think they pop up the prices knowing it’s for TV and because of the privacy.
They are cut off from the outside world apart from a 10-minute phone call to family or a 15-minute FaceTime if they have kids. Even then producers are on the line to “stop you saying anything about the process”.
Banter ban
Sam says she “felt like a child” for the majority of the process due to the extremely restrictive process that included being unable to go to the loo without a chaperone.
“It’s almost like they thought you were going to do a runner,” she quips. “You’d literally have to ask, ‘Can someone take me to the toilet?’”
Candidates were forbidden from knowing the time with even clocks on their home appliances changed to mislead, there were no TVs or radios and even when they went to hotels, everything was disconnected.
“Even when you stay in hotels on trips, they would make the hotel cut off the tellies in your rooms, the phones didn’t work and you couldn’t leave your room until a member of production came out to get you,” she recalls.
To avoid problems of previous years, Sam – who is happily married – noted that even banter was restricted to stop co-stars from getting frisky and violating their “no contact” rule.
“Do you know what? Even if we had any banter about anything of the slightest, they’d say ‘Enough of that!’”, she says.
There was no bowl or cereal symbols, just a bunch of fruit. Then in the board room, Lord Sugar goes, ‘You didn’t put a bowl on it?’ and you have to go along with it.
Sam
“They are very anti-romance, and quite anti getting close to people on a friendship level too. It was like, ‘This is business, you need to be cut-throat’.”
Candidates have live-in minders, who watch their every move and feed back to the production. They sleep on the same floor as the girls, presumably to stop naughty antics.
Sam says production even restricted conversation topics and says most of the time on tasks “you can’t talk” unless it’s about “the weather or your personal life”.
“All task talking has to be on camera, you can’t plan what you want to do,” she explains. “They will tell you, ‘No talking!’. It’s very regimented and really strict, I think it’s over the top.
“If you are caught talking about the task at home, you will be fined time for the task; so the next day you may have half an hour less than the other team.”
‘Banana skins’
That wasn’t the only obstacle when it came to tasks. Sam explains that each team is given a ‘dossier’ that only allows them to make certain choices.
“We used to call them ‘banana skins’ and they were constant,” she says.
“For the options, it was first come, first serve and after selecting, say the colour green, Karren Brady or Tim Campbell would be like ‘Let me check… Sorry, the other team got there first’. You never know if that’s true or not.”
Sam alleges episodes are rigged and that narratives are formed by the TV production team with leading questions, limited options and at times, sneaky tactics.
“When it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go,” she says. “They used to build a narrative about a person on a task that leads to them being fired.
“For the cereal task, when I left, they were like ‘Right, you can pick from these images on the cereal box’ but they were really limited choices.
They had to write down some more jokes that were more PG and after reading them from the paper he just crossed them off his list. Now that was really funny, you had to stop yourself from sniggering when that happened.
Sam
“There was no bowl or cereal symbols, just a bunch of fruit. Then in the board room, Lord Sugar goes, ‘You didn’t put a bowl on it?’ and you have to go along with it.
“In your mind, you know that wasn’t an option but you can’t say that. Then you look at the other team and they had the option of using a bowl on their cereal box. So it’s clear they push a narrative.”
‘Rigged’ tasks
Sam claims for the Treasure Hunt task they could only visit vendors preapproved by production and she suspects even they are instructed on how much they can sell or buy items for.
“I was bartering for oysters and the guy said, the best he could do was £15 for a dozen,” Sam says. “He wasn’t budging yet for the other team, he agreed to a tenner.
“It’s a way for them to build a narrative, to make it look like you’re not very good at bartering and for it to make sense when you’re fired. There are lots of tricks like that.”
That makes tasks even more complicated than they already are – for each, candidates can be woken up for filming as early as 4am and continue until around 11pm, often meaning they get “just five hours sleep”.
She adds: “You have no alarm clocks, either so when the cameras come into the room that literally happens. You are woken up with cameras in your face at silly o’clock.”
Ahead of the boardroom, Sam says they have to wait for up to three hours in silence, which she says was “almost like torture” and to build pressure, tension and anxiety. If anyone tries to talk, they are told to be quiet.
‘Risque gags’ axed
Lord Sugar is renowned for his witty one-liners but she reveals most are scripted because the tycoon’s wisecracks “are inappropriate, old school and too edgy” meaning they don’t make it to TV.
“His inappropriate jokes are hilarious but you just can’t say certain things so production has to feed him jokes,” she says.
There have been many times where people who reach the final get through each task or survive the boardroom by the skin of their teeth, like how on earth did they get there?
Sam
“They had to write down some more jokes that were more PG and after reading them from the paper he just crossed them off his list. Now that was really funny, you had to stop yourself from sniggering when that happened.”
The boardroom seems focused on drama and Sam claims even Lord Sugar wants to ramp up the dog-eat-dog atmosphere, as she overheard his angry rant after their group were sent outside.
“Outside, I could hear him saying, ‘Why are they not shouting and screaming at each other? Why aren’t they arguing?’
“They want you to fight, clash and argue, but for our series we were all a bit too nice and mature. I guarantee this season will have more of that because they are younger. It looks more like Love Island than The Apprentice.”
After being fired candidates leave with their suitcases, which have one night’s clothes packed inside, and head to the hotel. The following day they collect their belongings.
However, the scene where they walk into a cab from Lord Sugar’s offices isn’t real – the boardroom is filmed at “a big studio” and the walk away is recorded before the process begins.
Sam says that’s why candidates always wear the same outfit for the boardroom, so that “for continuity purposes” it matches the prerecorded clip.
It’s filmed before the show begins, which is why they wear the same outfits each time in the boardroom “for continuity”.
Despite finding The Apprentice extremely challenging, Sam – known as The Mummy Motivator online – has no regrets and is grateful for the exposure it gave her.
She tells us: “I have to give it to them, I had a bloody brilliant experience overall and it helped to give me a platform to take my business to the next level. But I’ll definitely enjoy The Apprentice way more this year.”
The Sun approached the BBC and The Apprentice’s production company for comment.
You can follow Sam Saadet’s work and find out more about The Mummy Movement here: www.themummymovement.com.
The Apprentice winners who have quit
By Conor O’Brien
Since The Apprentice launched in 2005, Lord Alan Sugar has crowned several winners.
In 2011, the prize changed from a job working under Lord Sugar to a £250,000 investment partnership.
While some past winners work with Lord Sugar to this day, other collaborations have long ended.
Here is a look at some of the winners who have quit working with the business giant.
- Tim Campbell: After winning the first series, Tim (who was 26 at the time) secured a position at Lord Sugar’s company Amstrad on a £100,000 salary. After two years, Tim left to start a perfume business – although this was later abandoned. Since 2022, he has been back on The Apprentice as one of Lord Sugar’s aides.
- Lee McQueen: Having won series four in 2008, 30-year-old Lee McQueen was assigned a position at Amscreen. He left the role after two years in July 2010.
- Yasmina Siadatan: Yasmina, who won The Apprentice in 2009, fell pregnant four months into her £100k-a-year role. She worked for Lord Sugar for 12 months but chose not to return after her maternity leave.
- Stella English: 2010 winner Stella English went on to work for Lord Sugar’s Viglen after time on the BBC show. However, she walked out after 13 months of employment when told her contract would not be renewed and claimed she was just an “overpaid lackey”.
- Mark Wright: Australian-born Mark won in 2014 and used the £250,000 investment to found digital marketing agency Climb Online. He parted ways with Lord Sugar in 2022, selling the business for an estimated £10million.
- Joseph Valente: Former plumber Joseph won the BBC show in 2015. However, he and Lord Sugar ultimately ended their working relationship after 18 months.
- Alana Spencer: Alana partnered up with Lord Sugar after winning in 2016. She claimed the top spot with her cake business Ridiculously Rich. The pair worked together for three years – until Alana ultimately bought out Lord Sugar.
- James White: In a one-time situation, James was one of two Apprentice winners in 2017. Three years after he won the show, Lord Sugar left the IT recruitment company, but reportedly let him keep the £250,000 investment.
- Sarah Lynn: Sweets delivery businesswoman Sarah was the other joint winner in 2017. She and Lord Sugar parted ways in September 2022.
- Carina Lepore: After winning The Apprentice in 2019, Lord Sugar put a £250,000 investment in Carina Lepore’s Dough Artisan Bakehouse business. However, the pair ended their partnership in 2023.