Let the mudslinging begin!
The upcoming all-star season of “Celebrity Apprentice” has reignited a nasty on-going feud between season one champ Piers Morgan and reality bad girl Omarosa Manigault.
“It’s almost like the Omarosa-Piers show,” Manigault told a gathering of television writers in Los Angeles yesterday. “He said he came back this season solely to torture me, and that’s all he did for episode after episode. And it’s authentic.”
Morgan, now a talk show host at CNN, returns along with other past winners (John Rich, Joan Rivers and Brett Michaels) to act as a mentor to the 14 celebrities competing to win money for charity in Donald Trump’s boardroom.
‘When Donald Trump asked me to be his boardroom advisor on two of the new All Star Celebrity Apprentice challenges, I realized this would give me a unique opportunity to get Omarosa fired all over again,” Morgan tells The Post. “I saw it as a public duty on behalf of all Americans.’
Omarosa tells us more about reconnecting with her arch enemy:
Q: What do you think of the people who want Piers deported for voicing his political opinions on TV?
I am a journalist by trade, so I am very careful about people’s rights. First Amendment rights are very important to me. But he has to understand the situation he is stirring up. He is really brilliant at creating controversy for himself. I wasn’t sure if he was part of the schtick or whatever, but I am curious to see what comes out of it. I try not to get involved with it. But when I tell you he is so toxic… Usually I have fun mixing it up with people. That is just unnatural.
Q: Would you have rather competed with him, as opposed to him being in that power position?
If he were competing, I wouldn’t have done the show. I thought, since he was a mentor, that it wouldn’t be so bad. But I was not prepared for the matchup that was Piers’ sole purpose of getting me off the show.
Q: Do you think he could have competed with this group of people?
Why come back at all? He brags about “Oh I am at CNN. (I’m) a serious person.” That has to be a testament to what is going on in his life that he would come back and do a reality show. He goes from interviewing the President of the United States to coming to a meatball competition?
Q: You are a strong personality. Is there any way to shift that paradigm?
When he is a judge, he was a part of the outcome of the competition. A lot of it I had to temper because I didn’t want to let my kids down for the center. Believe me, if I was not playing for Michael Clark Duncan’s charity, I would have jumped over the table and done what half of America wants to do to him. It was a very bizarre situation. It was kind of like if you were on “American Idol” and Simon Cowell was coming at you. Do you curse him out? You know? It was to the point where my cast mates were like “Enough is enough!”
Q: Regarding Michael, did he pass while you were making the show?
No. He passed seven weeks before. It is a huge loss. But you have to understand that Michael had the heart attack earlier in that year. He didn’t have the heart attack in September. It was a long process. I literally was in the ICU from the moment he had the heart attack until this. You have to understand that I was literally indoors for months and months and months. Then I stayed in the house for another six or seven weeks. People were like “It’s been five months and you need to do something.”
Q: Was there something therapeutic for you about returning to the show?
My friends are on there. Trace and Mary Lou — the two of them were like angels to me. The therapy was that I felt like I was going to do something profound for his charity. And raise awareness.
Q: Did that make you fight harder?
Yes. I was like “I am going to deliver a check to these kids.” And when I walked in with a check for those kids, it made all the hell I went through with Piers and and all the grieving (go away).
Q: How are you doing now?
It is day by day. The holiday’s threw me back into grieving. His birthday was December 10. New Years… We were meant to get married around this time. It was awful. If I didn’t have a strong family and strong faith, I would be in the crazy house!
“All Star Celebrity Apprentice” premieres March 3 on NBC.