Posts Tagged ‘Annie Duke’

TV Fanatic loves an inside scoop!

The Celebrity Apprentice’s Claudia Jordan is taking over Monday’s columns to recap the show. Claudia, fire away!

"Just finished watching the second episode of Celebrity Apprentice, and I must say it was so interesting to see how the editors and producers put it all together.

I was on Team Athena with the rest of the women. After winning last week’s task we wanted to show that it was more than just a fluke – we’re a force to be reckoned with!

Creating that comic book character and a costume for the online shopping site Zappos.com. should have been easy, but when you gather eight different personalities in a room with super egos, something that should take an hour took about eight with six hours spent talking about nothing.

I then had an epiphany and shared my idea with my group.

As we fleshed out the character, Donald Trump Jr. came in our room to check on our team and asked who came up with the idea for our character. Melissa Rivers immediately claimed credit and said "It was me!"

I was shocked, but bit my tongue. While I did want Mr. Trump to be aware that I was working hard and contributing creatively, I had to chose my battles. At one point Joan Rivers leaned over to me and whispered, "You better speak up, they are trying to steal your idea," they being Annie Duke and Melissa.

At the end of the night I started to get severe chills. My throat closed up and I could barely swallow. I held back the tears and kept working; I did NOT want to leave my team.

With an hour or two left before quitting time, several of my teammates demanded that I go home and get rest so I would be okay to deliver the presentation the next morning.

I kept pleading that I still wanted to work – I didn’t want to later be accused of not being a team player. At one point a prescription had to be called in for me and I had to take antibiotics because doctors thought I had some sort of infection in my chest.

I was stuffed up and had a fever, chills, sore throat and a huge swollen gland in my throat.

My teammates were concerned that I was contagious and I was sent home. I said I didn’t want to but that I also didn’t want to infect my team as well. I hated to leave my team, but they insisted.

What you didn’t see on television was that I had made bets and told the girls that we were going to win three challenges in a row. So even though I left, I felt that we were going to be okay.

But once again, Annie was very overbearing and bossy. She can’t possibly be listening to others if she is talking that much!

In my opinion, she’s very immature in the way she relates to other women. It was a constant battle with her and that was energy wasted where we could have used it elsewhere.

Good communication is so vital to being successful when it comes to dealing with others, and I’m proud that I can talk to people without disrespecting them.

I got myself together so I didn’t look too sick the day of the presentation, but I absolutely was.

I was light-headed, dizzy, weak and nauseous from all the cold medicine and antibiotics in my system.

Joan and Melissa were absent on the day of our presentation. They had prior engagements and had the day off, so I really felt the added pressure.

There were quite a few times that team members were absent for various reasons. When this would happen the rest of us had to do our best to step up.

I definitely stumbled a bit during the presentation, but made a few jokes to clean it up a bit.

I was pretty relieved when it was over, but was also disappointed by my performance and wished I hadn’t gotten sick.

I am radio host and I have done stand up comedy a couple times and I knew if I had been 100% I could have really knocked the ball out of the park.

But there was nothing else I could do at that point but sit and wait for the results.

Tensions were building between Melissa and I because I felt she blatantly disrespected the others and I by outright stealing credit for my idea and constantly talking over everyone else. I’m really big on respect. My mother raised me to show that to others, so I’m constantly conscious of it.

Luckily, Khloe Kardashian spoke up and said, "Actually it was Claudia who came up with the skeleton, and we built from that." Redemption! And I didn’t have to be the bad guy, nice!

Joan and Annie started to not be on the best of terms in this episode as well. Annie really rubbed Joan the wrong way by shunning her out of writing the script.
Annie was behaving like the project manager, again, when she wasn’t. That started a real rift between the two.

My team doesn’t always pay attention to some of our members who had lots of life experience to draw from. T-Boz owns a successful store in Atlanta. At times I felt I was sticking up for her. You really have to fight to get heard.

But in the boardroom the men clearly weren’t getting along. They had some serious teamwork issues, and it made our tension seem almost civil in comparison.

My team won and avoided having to go to the boardroom and tear each other apart. Then men went at it and in the end Scott Hamilton was fired. It was pretty obvious he and Tom Green did not like each other.

Thanks for visiting, and please check back next Monday for more behind the scenes of the show!"

xoxo,

Claudia

Celebrity Apprentice airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on NBC