Donald Trump reveals in the upcoming book “Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass,” written by PvNew’s co-editor in chief Ramin Setoodeh, that he asked for a salary of $6 million per episode to host “The Apprentice” Season 2. An excerpt from the book published by Vanity Fair recounts how Trump wanted a significant salary boost for the second season of his NBC reality competition series. He made $25,000 per episode during the show’s first season.
As Trump recalls, NBC was “really in the basement” at the time of his contract negotiations for “The Apprentice” Season 2 because the network’s biggest hit, “Friends,” was on its way out after 10 seasons. “Friends” always earned more viewers than “The Apprentice” when airing a new episode, but “The Apprentice” would earn more when going up against “Friends” re-runs. It appears Trump latched onto the latter statistic as a win for “The Apprentice” and a big reason he deserved more money for Season 2. If “The Apprentice” had more viewers in Trump’s eyes and the cast of “Friends” were each pulling in a then-record $1 million per episode, that could only mean Trump’s Season 2 salary should match that.
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