Late in the summer of 2003, a team of television producers stepped off the elevator on the 26th floor of Trump Tower eager to survey the set of their next reality show. After years filming “Survivor” in jungles around the world, training cameras on exotic spiders and deadly snakes to evoke danger, they came looking for a different set of sensory clues, the tiny details that would convey wealth and power.
Right away, they knew they had a problem.
The first thing they noticed was the stench, a musty carpet odor that followed them like an invisible cloud. Then they spotted scores of chips in the finish of the wooden desks and credenzas. The décor felt long out of date, making the space seem like a time capsule from when Donald J. Trump opened the building early in his first rise to fame.
The place did not exactly buzz with energy either. Fewer than 50 people worked at Trump Organization headquarters in midtown Manhattan. At the office’s spiritual center, Mr. Trump’s own desk bore no evidence of work, no computer screens or piles of contracts and blueprints, just a blanket of news articles focused on one subject: himself.
“When you go into the office and you’re hearing ‘billionaire,’ even ‘recovering billionaire,’ you don’t expect to see chipped furniture, you don’t expect to smell carpet that needs to be refreshed in the worst, worst way,” recalled Bill Pruitt, one of the producers of the new NBC show.
That program, “The Apprentice,” would at its essence be a game show, with a job in this office as the ultimate prize. But that prize, in a literal sense, stunk. Making viewers believe the central conceit — that Ivy League grads would eagerly connive and humiliate themselves for a chance to learn at the side of this icon of success — would test the bounds of reality television magic.
“The whole thing was absurd to all of us,” remembered another producer, Alan Blum.
This account of Mr. Trump’s first years on “The Apprentice,” and the money he made from it, is drawn from our forthcoming book, “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success.” It is based on dozens of interviews over several years, confidential internal records from the show, and the decades of Trump family financial and tax records that we obtained during our prior investigative reporting for The New York Times. Mr. Trump, currently running for president for the third time, did not respond to invitations to be interviewed either for the book or this article.
The office vibe that day only partially captured the difficulties that Mr. Trump faced at the time. More than a decade after his unsupportable borrowing on casinos, an airline shuttle and a hotel pushed him to the brink of financial collapse, Mr. Trump again faced the impending bankruptcy of those casinos, still the laggards of Atlantic City. His efforts to expand into golf course ownership had hit roadblocks at zoning boards, and even when he broke through the regulators, his courses failed to produce meaningful profits. A planned tower in Chicago, remained stalled.
Mr. Trump had never returned to his late 1980s smoke-and-mirrors glory, when he built a hodgepodge conglomerate on the backs of free-lending banks and, without anyone knowing at the time, his father’s wealth. The lenders eventually forced him to give back nearly everything, and he put his casinos and a hotel through bankruptcies to escape other debts.
As he began playing a wealthy tycoon on television, Mr. Trump secretly put a plan in motion to tap into his father’s fortune again. Though he spent his life denying that fortune existed, deriding his father as a small-timer to make his own accomplishments seem more heroic, being born rich had been the first lucky break of his very lucky life.
Mr. Trump had mostly luck to credit for being discovered, at age 57, by Mark Burnett, then the hottest name in the hottest new television genre. With two groundbreaking reality hits under his belt — “Eco Challenge” and “Survivor” — Mr. Burnett was the darling of network executives, who were hungry for his next creation. His company, a well-oiled machine with a deep bench of producers, would handle the creative and business sides of the new show. Mr. Trump would need only to play a re-crafted version of himself.
Mr. Burnett’s team had contacted several moguls — Jack Welch, Warren Buffett and Richard Branson — who would not require a reputational makeover. But the producers concluded that those men lacked either the time or the necessary charisma. For better or worse, Mr. Trump, long a staple of the New York City tabloids, drew eyeballs and would never shy away from a camera. (Mr. Burnett did not respond to invitations to be interviewed.)
“The Apprentice” would follow the same format as “Survivor.” Contestants would be divided into two teams and compete in a different “challenge” each week. At the end of an episode, the losing team would meet with Mr. Trump, who after encouraging some sniping among contestants would look at one and utter what became his signature phrase, “You’re fired!” The last two remaining contestants would compete in a season finale for a yearlong apprenticeship — with a salary paid by the network — at the Trump Organization.
Whether it would all work remained an open question. Not letting viewers see, or smell, Mr. Trump’s office would be the easy part. The producers would also need to invent a version of Donald Trump that did not actually exist — measured, thoughtful and endlessly wealthy — a complete rehabilitation of his public image. In the most recent Gallup survey measuring Mr. Trump’s reputation before the show, 98 percent of those polled knew his name, but 58 percent viewed him unfavorably.
“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,” remembered Jonathon Braun, a producer who had worked on “Survivor.” “We weren’t making a documentary,” he added. “Richard Attenborough was not narrating this. This was an entertainment prime-time network show.”
And that show created an unlikely reality TV star, one whose mysterious and yet undeniable appeal to viewers would ultimately find its biggest stage on the presidential campaign trail.
Making Him Out to Be Royalty
The remaking of Donald Trump began one windy day on the roof of Trump Tower. As Mr. Burnett’s production crew huddled around monitors and cameras, and Mr. Trump stood waiting for his cue, a helicopter carrying a videographer hovered near them. The plan called for a shot to zoom in tight on Mr. Trump and then pan out to make him seem like the King of New York. As the chopper moved in, Mr. Trump suddenly shouted out to one of the producers.
“KEVIN! Is my hair OK?”
The producer, Kevin Harris, turned to see that the wind and the whirling helicopter blades had levitated Mr. Trump’s hair, which looked like a cotton candy pancake floating over his head. Mr. Harris quickly realized that if he told Mr. Trump the truth the entire shoot would be lost to vanity.
“Yeah, it looks fine!” Mr. Harris shouted above the noise, knowing that the gusts would subside, and Mr. Trump’s hair would safely land.
They shot several takes to make sure. Later that day, the crew reviewed the results in a production office. “When that tape went in and that happened the whole room erupted into laughter,” Mr. Harris recalled.
It was then that Mr. Harris, now a producer on the Fox show “The Masked Singer” and who remains fond of Mr. Trump, realized that protecting his star from embarrassment would require vigilance.
After weeks of shooting across the Northeast, and weeks more editing at Mr. Burnett’s facilities in Los Angeles, Mr. Burnett’s crew completed the final video seeking to remake Donald Trump’s image. Titled “Meet the Billionaire,” the segment opened with a signature Burnett aerial montage, taking viewers soaring over New York Harbor, past the Statue of Liberty, and through the Manhattan skyline with a voice-over of Mr. Trump proclaiming the city’s toughness. “But if you work hard, you can really hit it big,” Mr. Trump said as the camera passed over Seven Springs, an aging estate north of the city that he had purchased years earlier with a still-stalled plan of building a golf course on the grounds.
The screen filled with neon lights glowing outside the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, part of the casino company that had never turned a profit and was nearing bankruptcy again. As Mr. Trump mentioned the words “highest-quality brand,” the screen filled with images of Trump Ice, a bottled water that would fail as a business, and Trump Place, an apartment building bearing Trump’s name that had been financed and controlled by other people; Mr. Trump’s primary contribution was the use of his last name.
“But it wasn’t always so easy,” the narration continued. “About 13 years ago, I was seriously in trouble. I was billions of dollars in debt. But I fought back, and I won, big league. I used my brain. I used my negotiating skills, and I worked it all out. Now my company is bigger than it ever was. It’s stronger than it ever was. And I’m having more fun than I ever had. I’ve mastered the art of the deal, and I’ve turned the name Trump into the highest-quality brand.”
Mr. Trump did not mention that he had just directed his siblings to sell the dozens of buildings their late father had left them in trust funds, a betrayal of Fred Trump’s wishes to keep his empire in the family. Donald Trump, four years after his father’s death, orchestrated the private sale for $738 million. It was a huge number. But the buyers’ banks valued the buildings at about $975 million, raising a question about Mr. Trump’s claim to have mastered the art of the deal. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump’s share of the proceeds, after covering small mortgages, would total $177.3 million.
To finish crafting the television version of Donald Trump, Mr. Burnett rented vacant space on the fourth floor of Trump Tower, agreeing to pay his star about $440,000 a year for it, Mr. Trump’s tax records showed. Mr. Burnett also hired a set designer who had worked for five seasons on “Survivor,” tasking her to create a suitably impressive boardroom, along with apartments for the contestants.
Variations of “Meet the Billionaire” would run at the opening of the show every week, strengthening Mr. Trump’s remade image through repetition. Eighteen months later, a Gallup survey found half of Americans held a favorable view of Donald Trump.
“We were making him out to be royalty in almost every opportunity,” Mr. Pruitt, a producer, said. “It was our mission to make sure that everybody watching understood that to work for him would be a big deal.”
The Virtues of Unpredictability
David Gould looked perplexed. Mr. Trump, during the first episode of “The Apprentice,” had just asked the losing contestants to name the worst leader on their team. Everyone said Sam Solovey. Except Mr. Solovey, who said Mr. Gould was the worst. The contestants had battled to make the most money selling lemonade on the streets of Manhattan. Mr. Solovey had decided that his bold stroke would be to sell one cup of lemonade for $1,000. He failed. Mr. Trump told him to “be careful” because “you’re a wild man.”
All that sounded as if Mr. Gould would be safe. But then Mr. Trump turned to him and uttered the words that would become his calling card: “You’re fired.”
The producers, watching in the windowless control room adjacent to the fake boardroom, were shocked. Mr. Gould was a licensed medical doctor with an M.B.A. who was then working as a venture capitalist; the producers thought he would be around for a long time. But the moment also brought a tingle of excitement.
“Right then we knew that we had a show, because this is not what you expected,” recalled Katherine Walker, one of the producers.
Mr. Trump’s unpredictability, a vice in business, proved to be a virtue in this new setting. The proclivities behind his worst failures — shutting down complicated discussions, ignoring written material, believing in his own genetic superiority — had found a perfect home in a pretend boardroom. He also was not around much. With no role in strategy, filming or production, Mr. Trump would not typically see the contestants “working” during the week.
“He would fire the absolute wrong person,” recalled Mr. Braun, who came to recognize the times when Mr. Trump “had no idea what was going on, and he would just make something up.”
“He just had to choose a name,” Mr. Braun said. “And maybe that was the only name he remembered of the people sitting around.”
For those moments when Mr. Trump’s choice threatened to reflect badly on him and the show, Mr. Burnett’s producers waved their magic wands in the editing bay. “Our job then was to reverse engineer the show and to make him not look like a complete moron,” Mr. Braun said. They would go back through the tape from the week and selectively choose snippets “to make the person who he fired look not as good,” he said.
The facts never really mattered. Drama mattered. Comedy mattered. Entertainment value mattered. Mr. Burnett liked to call it “dramality.” And Mr. Trump was dramatic, occasionally funny, and always entertaining.
‘How About a Million Dollars?’
By the finale of Season 1 in April 2004, “The Apprentice” had become a certified hit, with an average viewership of 20.7 million. Mr. Trump had become more famous than ever. That March, VH1 aired “The Fabulous Life of Donald Trump.” Two weeks later, he hosted “Saturday Night Live” for the first time. “It’s great to be here for ‘Saturday Night Live,’” Mr. Trump said during his opening monologue. “But I’ll be perfectly honest, it’s even better for ‘Saturday Night Live’ that I’m here. Nobody’s bigger than me. Nobody’s better than me. I’m a ratings machine. I’ve got the No. 1 television show, ‘The Apprentice,’ where after just one season, I’m about to become the highest-paid television personality in America!”
NBC had agreed to pay Mr. Trump $50,000 per episode for Season 1. He sought a raise to put him on par with the stars of the hit show “Friends.” NBC executives shut him down. But thanks to Mark Burnett’s planning and negotiating, that payment would be a small portion of Mr. Trump’s potential income from the show.
In negotiating with NBC, Mr. Burnett had insisted on control of product integration, the money companies would pay to see their goods featured in an episode. Jeff Zucker, who had been brought over from the news division in part to help NBC catch up to its rivals in the reality television realm, wanted a hit on the scale of “Survivor.” A show like that would generate a fortune from traditional commercials, regardless of whatever cash Mr. Burnett could pull out from featuring a soda or a bag of chips.
“It was just something that was kind of a deal point that Burnett really insisted on, and he had the leverage to do it at that point,” a person briefed on the discussions at the time recalled.
Mr. Burnett, in turn, had thought that someone of Mr. Trump’s stature would not commit to the show just for the money the network would pay him. In pitching the show to Mr. Trump, he offered to evenly split whatever money came from production integration. During Season 1, Mr. Burnett’s team had focused on persuading sponsors to give them free stuff. But the marketing departments of major corporations had been paying attention to the show’s ratings and impact on sponsors’ businesses.
Their sudden interest was signaled in a phone call to Kevin Harris from Procter & Gamble. A marketing executive wanted to know if Mr. Burnett’s team could create an entire episode around a new toothpaste.
“Toothpaste, that doesn’t sound very sexy and glamorous,” Mr. Harris later recalled responding.
“We will give you half a million dollars if you develop a challenge around the launch of the toothpaste,” the marketing person responded, according to Mr. Harris.
Suddenly, toothpaste sounded quite sexy and glamorous. But when he presented the offer to Mr. Burnett, they both concluded that it would amount to selling out the show.
When Mr. Harris delivered the bad news to Procter & Gamble, the woman on the phone barely let him finish the sentence: “How about a million dollars?” she asked.
Mr. Harris was shocked. The company ultimately agreed to throw in another $100,000 to fund that week’s challenge. Mr. Harris agreed but insisted that Mr. Burnett’s team would need to retain control of every aspect of the challenge. The deal that Mr. Burnett struck with the network to control product integration, and the success of his show, was about to bring Donald Trump the equivalent of a second inheritance.
‘T’ Marks the Spot
Dan Gill, a senior brand integration producer for Mr. Burnett, stood on the lawn outside the QVC Network studios gazing over the trees. At his side was Tim Megaw, a senior vice president at QVC, also searching the sky. They had been there for almost half an hour waiting for Donald Trump’s helicopter to break the horizon. Still, nothing.
QVC had paid $900,000 to sponsor an episode during the second season and more to transport the production team and the contestants, according to financial records from the show. As a favor to the star, after the episode had been filmed they invited Mr. Trump back to the campus in West Chester, a borough outside Philadelphia, to hawk his latest book on air. But Mr. Trump had refused to land his helicopter at Brandywine Regional Airport, which was on the adjoining property to QVC. In response, Mr. Megaw had directed employees to create an impromptu heliport on the grass on QVC grounds. And there they waited.
Finally, Mr. Trump’s helicopter appeared over the trees and dropped down toward the custom landing spot on the grass. The craft hovered briefly, then inexplicably flew off toward the QVC building.
“What the hell is going on?” Mr. Megaw said to Mr. Gill.
The helicopter buzzed toward the employee parking lot, maybe 200 feet away, and set down, its rotors kicking up hundreds of pebbles and firing them off in all directions, including at employees’ cars. More than a few of them would later file insurance claims to cover the damage.
Mr. Megaw was appalled. Mr. Gill felt “pissed” and “so embarrassed.” Mr. Gill asked Mr. Trump’s bodyguard why the helicopter had not landed on the custom spot. The answer did not make him feel any better.
“He didn’t want to step on the grass and muddy his shoes,” the bodyguard said.
It was a good day for Mr. Trump, though. His QVC appearance generated about $500,000 in book sales, Mr. Trump’s tax records show.
Mr. Trump was now a star, and he increasingly behaved like one, a moody and appearance-focused presence on “The Apprentice” set. Instead of the customary “X” marking where an on‑air personality is expected to stand, Mr. Trump demanded a “T.”
Several producers remember him completely losing focus when a woman he found attractive crossed his field of vision. He would accept only the shortest of briefings. Mr. Gill said he would often have no more than four minutes to brief Mr. Trump about the sponsor before taping began. “All that he cared about was how much money the integration thing would give to Trump Productions,” Mr. Gill said.
Without having to work for the product integration money, Mr. Trump increasingly focused on hitting up sponsors for side deals of his own, cutting out Mr. Burnett’s company.
Levi’s paid $1.1 million to sponsor an episode during Season 2. Just before the scene in which a Levi’s executive would pick the winning team, Kevin Harris heard Mr. Trump tell Melania, then his girlfriend, to go upstairs and put on a pair of Levi’s. When she returned, Mr. Trump presented her. “I have my girlfriend,” he said, “she’s wearing your jeans.” As Mr. Trump spoke, Melania smiled and turned halfway around to reveal the fit from all sides. Robert Hanson, the president of Levi’s, said, “Those look fantastic on you.”
After filming wrapped, Mr. Harris spoke with Mr. Trump and offered to pitch Levi’s on hiring Melania for a modeling gig.
“It’s a great idea, Kevin,” Mr. Trump answered, according to Mr. Harris. “Tell you what, I’ll give you 10 percent of anything you get for Melania.”
Mr. Harris quickly obtained a $50,000 offer for Melania.
About one week later, Mr. Harris was in the studio on the fourth floor when Mr. Trump called and invited him up to his penthouse apartment.
“I’ve got something for you,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Harris hustled to the elevator, excited to receive his $5,000 check. When he arrived, Mr. Trump opened the door and yelled upstairs for Melania. She gracefully descended the staircase carrying a golf putter in a felt sleeve and ceremoniously handed the putter to Mr. Trump, who presented it to Mr. Harris.
“Thanks for doing the deal,” Mr. Trump said. He then took the putter back, produced a Sharpie, and added his EKG-like signature to the felt cover. “There you go.”
Mr. Harris thought for a beat: “I said to myself, you know what? It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it to say a word. I’m just going to swallow this. He is my host. The TV show is a bigger deal.”
Later, General Motors paid $3.5 million to sponsor an episode that would introduce a new two-seat roadster, the Pontiac Solstice. After shooting ended, Mr. Trump suggested to Mark-Hans Richer, a senior marketing officer at G.M., that the company should create a car named Trump. “No offense, I don’t think it should be a Pontiac,” Mr. Trump said to the marketing director. “It should probably be a Cadillac.”
Mr. Richer thought maybe Mr. Trump was trying to be funny and responded in-kind, invoking the name of another G.M. brand: “Why don’t we make it a Hummer? We’ll call it a Trummer.”
The star did not laugh. Mr. Trump told an employee to give his business card to Mr. Richer and said they should speak again. After a bit of research, Mr. Richer decided there was no point in proceeding. “We couldn’t really find a compelling case for how a Trump-licensed product had been successful,” he later recalled.
Meatballs on a Pizza
An episode built around Domino’s Pizza began to go off the rails as soon as Mr. Trump defined the challenge to the contestants. “For your next task,” Mr. Trump told them, “you are going to create an original style of pizza for Domino’s using toppings they don’t usually offer on a menu. I like meatballs.”
Meatballs. No one had expected Mr. Trump to mention meatballs. Both teams went off to their respective studios to brainstorm, and within a few minutes decided to create meatball pizzas.
This was not ideal television. Mr. Burnett had warned his team to avoid having two groups of contestants doing the same thing because the audience would not be able to track which team was doing what. Indeed, the episode landed like a meatball mishmash, with two teams selling the same pizzas from mobile vehicles in Manhattan.
“You called it a meatball pie?” Mr. Trump asked the team that had sold the most pizzas during a scene taped at his apartment. “I think they’re going with that now. Aren’t they going to make what you did? I think they’re going with it”
Except they weren’t. After watching the filming, Domino’s executives decided the best choice for their menu was anything but meatballs. Trisha Drueke-Heusel, a Domino’s executive who was on set, wrote to Mr. Gill to break the bad news: “Domino’s will not be launching the pizzas the teams came up with during the Domino’s task.”
Ms. Drueke-Heusel, who had made a name for herself at Domino’s developing a Philly cheesesteak pizza, revealed that Domino’s would soon announce a cheeseburger pizza and planned to air commercials promoting it during “The Apprentice.” She had gone around the production team to hire Mr. Trump as the company’s new cheeseburger pizza spokesman: “We are currently negotiating with Mr. Trump to appear in a commercial for this new pizza and have purchased ad time in our episode to run this new spot.”
This time, nothing would be left to chance. To avoid another ad lib that would create more problems, Mr. Trump read from a script to fix what he had said about a coming meatball pie and set the table for the cheeseburger ad.
“Speaking of last week’s task, here’s something you didn’t know,” he said to the contestants. “Both teams created meatball pizza. But if you had done your market research like Domino’s did, you would have discovered that customers don’t want meatball pizza. What they want is cheeseburger pizza.”
During the commercial breaks, Domino’s aired the cheeseburger pizza ad featuring Mr. Trump. There he was, in his office, accepting delivery from a Domino’s delivery man. As Mr. Trump noshed on a cheeseburger pizza, he blithely told the deliveryman that Domino’s should invent a cheeseburger pizza.
“You ought to be paying me for this,” he deadpanned.
“Saturday Night Live” spoofed the ad, with Darrell Hammond rendering Mr. Trump as a clueless pseudo-thespian, improvising absurd riffs on the wonders of pizza and mispronouncing Domino’s. But the money was no joke. Domino’s paid Mr. Trump $500,000 that year, in addition to his share of the $2.75 million the restaurant chain paid to Mr. Burnett’s company for the episode.
Mr. Burnett’s money team had never dreamed they would see these kinds of numbers. In one year, they had gone from trying to get sponsors to give them things free to expecting more than $2 million an episode. Jordan Yospe, a senior lawyer on Mr. Burnett’s team who often briefed Mr. Trump on sponsors, looked at the figures coming in and thought, “unbelievable . . . shocking . . . just unbelievable.”
Keeping the Talent Happy
Walking the streets of New York City one day, Mr. Gill noticed a flier for a Learning Annex conference and had a thought. He cold-called the continuing education company to ask if it might sponsor an episode during Season 4.
Heather Moore, the company’s vice president for business operations and product management, loved the idea, Mr. Gill later said. She mentioned that the founder, Bill Zanker, knew Mr. Trump, which Mr. Gill assumed would help seal a deal. Mr. Gill and Ms. Moore began discussing a price upward of $2 million.
Then Ms. Moore suddenly changed direction. She told Mr. Gill that Mr. Trump and Mr. Zanker had worked out a side deal, Mr. Gill said. The Learning Annex would pay Mr. Trump directly for a series of speeches. That agreement would earn Mr. Trump more than $7 million for about 20 appearances, his tax records showed. (Ms. Moore declined to comment.)
Mr. Burnett agreed to let the Learning Annex sponsor an episode for just $50,000. During a production meeting in Los Angeles, Mr. Gill revealed Mr. Trump’s end run around the Burnett team. At least one other senior member of Mr. Burnett’s staff thought Mr. Trump’s side deals sounded “slimy” and undermined everyone working to make him rich.
Mr. Burnett was willing to let it go as a cost of keeping the talent happy.
Let “the chips fall where they may, and we’ll still get a great episode,” Mr. Burnett told the staff, according to a person who was present. “Trump’s going to make some money. What can we do about it?”
Mr. Trump was on his way to collect more than $200 million from “The Apprentice” and an even quirkier offshoot, “Celebrity Apprentice,” as host for over more than a decade. Thanks to his rehabilitated image, he would earn another $200 million from licensing and endorsement deals. That lucky windfall, similar in size to his inheritance and also requiring no business expertise, funded a new wave of Trump-run businesses that would lose money.
In June 2015, Mr. Trump was again at Trump Tower, staging the announcement of his candidacy for president, riding his brassy escalator down to the atrium level in a scene that would look familiar to fans of “The Apprentice.” But in his speech, Mr. Trump stepped from behind the veil of television magic, revealing himself without the protection of Mr. Burnett’s editors to polish his rougher edges. The moment became best known for his comments accusing Mexico of “sending people that have lots of problems” to the United States.
“They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists,” Mr. Trump continued. “And some, I assume, are good people.”
NBC executives were appalled. Companies licensing the Trump name were appalled. Mr. Trump was soon off the show, and his stream of licensing deals mostly dried up.
But Mr. Trump took with him something of greater intrinsic value: an artfully concocted reputation as a self-made billionaire. That gift from Mr. Burnett would be central to the new, and even more unlikely career, that Donald Trump had only just begun.
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