Fired Apprentice candidate reveals Lord Sugar's boardroom twist was even more dramatic than what was seen on TV
In the most recent episode, the BBC1 business competition made a shock change to the final boardroom which viewers didn't see – CONTAINS SPOILERS
We’ve had triple firings. We’ve had candidates thrown out of the process immediately after losing a task. And, thanks to the most recent episode of The Apprentice 2018, we’ve now seen the entire losing side brought back into the final boardroom.
After they were defeated in this week's designer shoe task, Team Collaborative candidates – Kayode Damali, Jasmine Kundra, Kurran Pooni, Rick Monk, Sarah Ann Magson and project manager Jackie Fast – quickly turned on each other, with every candidate facing criticism from their teammates.
While project manager Jackie was blamed for the side’s poor shoe design, Jasmine clashed with Rick over the latter’s briskness in front of customers, and Kayode was faulted for ignoring customer questions. Kurran, Rick and Sarah Ann were all accused of not contributing enough to the task.
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Eventually, Jackie elected to bring back Kayode and Kurran for the final showdown. However, while discussing the three candidates with aides Karren Brady and Claude Littner, Lord Sugar decided to bring the entire team back to the boardroom.
And as fired Rick explained to RadioTimes.com, the twist was even more dramatic than viewers saw. "When Jackie unveiled who she wanted to bring back in, we stood up and were elated that we'd survived another week and walked out of the boardroom to the cars, ready to go back to the house," he said. "We were really happy."
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He continued: "Then the phone call came through. It said we needed to go back to the boardroom. One of the other candidates said it would just be a technical issue and we'd have to re-record something. But I knew in the back of my mind it was something more serious.
"Nobody told us what was going on. I don't even think that production knew – when we were getting out the car going into the boardroom they were in as much disbelief as we were. We got back, all got lined up. And the rest is history."
Luckily for the team, only one contestant was eliminated from the competition. After Jackie, Daniel and Jasmine were declared safe, Lord Sugar turned to the remaining candidates, eventually firing Rick, telling him: “My instinct tells me you’re not for this process. Rick, you’re fired.”
Kurran also narrowly avoided elimination after pleading to stay in the process and take on the project manager role next week. “Kurran, you are going to be the next project manager, come hell or high water,” Lord Sugar told him at the episode's end. “I don’t care what the bloody task is, you are doing it! Then you’re able to demonstrate what your skills are and whether you can lead people.”
Of course, this isn’t the first time Lord Sugar’s firing finger has blasted away a candidate unexpectedly.
Most notably, 2016 contestant Karthik Nagesan faced a swift monobrow-raising firing after he led a team that only brought in £188’s worth of sales in a boat-selling task, compared to the other team's £43,060.
“You’ve been a diabolic project manager,” Lord Sugar told him after learning the result. “I don’t trust you to bring anybody back into this boardroom,” he added before promptly firing Karthik.
Then there’s series four’s Jenny Celerier. During that year’s buying task, Jenny failed spectacularly while purchasing kosher meat, getting hold of a normal chicken and asking a Muslim priest to bless it. She also tried to bribe a tennis racquet salesman not to string the other team’s racquets.
Despite telling Lord Sugar it was her birthday, Jenny was swiftly punished in the initial boardroom for her actions and was promptly fired for trying to blame the errors on another candidate.
There are also several more cases of candidates fired outside the final boardroom, including 2014’s Robert Goodwin (a fashion entrepreneur fired for avoiding PM-ing a fashion-based task) and Elle Stevenson (who lost six tasks in a row).
And who knows, there’s every chance that Lord Sugar could fire another candidate outside the final boardroom this series – maybe even a contestant from the winning team. Yes, we’re looking at you, Kurran.
