So long and farewell! NBC likely won’t bring back Celebrity Apprentice for another season.
“We don’t have any plans for it at the moment, but I don’t think you’ll see it anytime soon,” the network’s entertainment chief, Bob Greenblatt, told TheWrap at the Television Critics Association press tour on Thursday, August 3. “We literally have put it on the shelf and I don’t think we have any plans to bring it back.”
The news comes five months after Arnold Schwarzenegger, who served as the hit series’ host when it was revived this year, announced that he will not be returning for another season. “I learned a lot, I had a great time, it was a really great opportunity. But under the circumstances I don’t want to do it again. even if asked I would decline,” the former California governor told Empire in March, before explaining that President Donald Trump, the show’s original host, is to blame. “When people found out that Trump was still involved as executive producer and was still receiving money from the show, then half the people [started] boycotting it … and had a bad taste and I don’t want to participate as a spectator or as a sponsor or in any other way support the show. It’s a very divisive period now and I think this show got caught up in all that division.”
Trump took to Twitter shortly after to refute the actor’s remarks. “Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t voluntarily leaving the Apprentice, he was fired by his bad (pathetic) ratings, not by me,” he wrote. “Sad end to great show.”
Schwarzenegger responded with a 40-second video later that month. “Oh, Donald, the ratings are in and you got swamped. Wow. Now you’re in the thirties? But what do you expect? I mean when you take away after-school programs for children and Meals on Wheels for the poor people, that’s not what you call ‘making America great again.’” he said in the clip. “Come on! I mean, who is advising you?”
The Apprentice first aired in 2004 and the Celebrity Apprentice premiered in 2008.
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