Lou Ferrigno, Adam Corolla, Penn Jillette, And Aubrey O’Day Chat About Celebrity Apprentice

The new cast has been announced for NBC‘s Celebrity Apprentice, and if that was not enough to excite you, you are in luck, as we have some of the new contestants‘ thoughts to share with you. That’s right – Adam Corolla, Lou Ferrigno, Penn Jillette, and Aubrey O’Day sat down to chat about the show in a recent press interview. What did they have to say about the new season? You’ll have to read on to find out!


The new season of Celebrity Apprentice premieres Sunday, February 12th, and if you can’t wait, you are in luck as a few of the contestants sat down for a press interview today. Adam Corolla, Lou Ferrigno, Penn Jillette, and Aubrey O’Day shared some thoughts on the upcoming season for you! Unfortunately, Lou Ferrigno had a bad connection, and did not answer many questions, but the others had plenty of answers! Check out their press conference below.

Question: This question is for everyone. Can you talk about what you have found be your strong suit when you’re competing?

Aubrey O’Day: My strong suit is that I’m able to manipulate all the boys, right guys?

Penn Jillette: I would say my strong point is simply not die. I mean if I do deep breathing, stay alive, let the (eso) depletion happen, not dying is all you have to do, the same as being shipwrecked. Your only heroic is not to die.

Adam Carolla: You know, it is about survival more than it’s, you know, you’re not there to thrive. You’re there not to be eliminated and not to have a stroke. And I don’t want to give away too much but I was one of those things during the course of the show.

Question: Lou can you talk about the experience was different than what you expected when you first signed on?

Lou Ferrigno: Well first of all, I was on the show with a bunch of great talent, great people, great friends. It was very difficult and very challenging. I learned a lot but I really had a lot of fun. And it’s tough. But basically it’s like a chess game.

Question: This one is for everyone. Who surprised you the most on the show?

Penn Jillette: I was a little surprised by Paul Senior. You know, Paul Senior was a guy of a stupid show that just yelled a lot and meant nothing to me. And he turned out to be a very good friend and really smart and really savvy and really, really kind and measured. And I appreciate all those things. And that was kind of a shock. A lot of the other people on the show I knew before I went in. And a lot of the people on the show acted the way that I could have predicted. But Paul Senior was a real surprise for me.

Adam Carolla: I was surprised that Clay Aiken was as gritty as he was. Like I knew Clay Aiken was, you know – I knew the guy had the competitive spirit because he did another show that we won’t mention that involved the competition. But I didn’t know the guy other than is his huge candy consumption had a lot of just roll up his sleeves and great – well you don’t normally associate Clay Aiken with that kind of guy you’d want on your football team but to me it was Clay Aiken.

Question: Can you all talk about how you chose your charities?

Penn Jillette: My charity was Opportunity Village which is a – it’s a charity for intellectually disabled result adults in the Las Vegas area. And it’s a real important paradigm. It’s a new way of thinking of getting people back into the culture. And you take wonderfully successful things that people for whom tying their shoes and cooking breakfast is a difficult thing to not be warehoused to be a part of society. But all of that is just the intellectual justification. The real reason in my heart is that it was an Elvis charity and all those scarves that Elvis gave out from the stage were made at Opportunity Village. Every time Elvis kissed one of those scarves and threw them out in the audience that was something made by Opportunity Village. So i was on Celebrity Apprentice fighting for the charity that Elvis Aaron Presley would have fought for.

Adam Carolla: For me it was Catholic Big Brothers not even because I’m Catholic, just because I was part of the program many years ago. And I just saw what a positive change it could create in a young child’s life. So for me it was pretty simple. I just picked a charity that i myself was a Catholic Big brother way back in the early and mid-90s. And it just seemed like a logical choice.

Aubrey O’Day: This is Aubrey. I chose GLSEN which stands for the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network because I experienced bullying growing up. I’m sure a lot of the celebrities on the actual show experienced not fitting in at one point or another. I felt like it’s also something that is very relevant now in pop culture and something that we’ve seen a great deal of. And as someone that’s experienced it and someone that’s involved with a lot of charity I felt like it would be the strongest representation of what’s popular now to stand up for and defend and really have a voice for.

Question: What was something that you learned about yourself from doing The Celebrity Apprentice?

Aubrey O’Day: I learned that i was a lot better at being like real-world jobs than I thought. I think when you’re in entertainment long enough you get used to the hustle and bustle of what it takes to survive in this world. And although it is a reality show and it’s something in an entertainment world, the jobs that we were doing were for actual companies and we were building products and branding and really creating a name for a company and it was a serious job and they were looking for serious results. And I think that it was really fun to be able to learn other things that I was good at.

Adam Carolla: I found out that i was basically a puss who couldn’t handle 6-1/2 hours of sleep six days a week and needed a TiVo and/or DVR apparatus not more than 3 feet away from me no matter where I was. So for me I found my weaknesses instead of my inner strengths.

Penn Jillette: I found that if I really focused and the stakes were really high I could stay in a room with Clay Aiken without swallowing my own tongue. It’s a miracle. I look back on it my friends are just gob smacked that i was – that i didn’t just run out screaming.

Question: This question is for Penn. Why not just use mind games and magic to win?

Penn Jillette: Because no one knows what game you’re playing. It’s an arbitrary game without rules. I can’t tell you the game – the rules of Texas Hold ‘em. I cannot tell you the rules of Celebrity Apprentice. It’s an arbitrary capricious thing. So if there aren’t rules you can’t cheat. If there were rules I would have cheated.

Question: So does that mean you didn’t use any magic or mind games?

Penn Jillette: I – it turns out I did do magic, I did do juggling, I did do fire eating. But in terms of mind games it was mostly just, you know, being in a tiger cage and numb.

Question: Can you give us any tidbits on what we can expect this season on Celebrity Apprentice?

Aubrey O’Day: Well this season we had a bigger cast. We had the biggest cast we’ve ever had. I think we started off with what, 18 people guys, nine and nine? And usually they start off I think with six and six. So we had a much bigger season. We had. I think crazier challenges in a lot of ways than I’ve ever seen on other past seasons. Also, I mean it’s a bunch of Type A personalities that think they are the biggest star in the room and think that they know everything and think that they’re right and you’re watching all of them fight to stay in that night. So it’s interesting TV started off I think with a lot of really great stars. I think there is a bigger star power on the guys cast than there was on the girls clearly. And I think that it was really interesting to see everything go down. I definitely think that the girls need much better TV than the guys and will be the reason why everyone tunes in besides Penn and Adam Carolla who are amazing.

Question: Did you have a particular strategy going in, and did that end up changing?

Adam Carolla: I did not personally other than, you know don’t get everyone to hate you the first week. But you learn. You learn pretty quick that whatever you had planned at the beginning is probably only good for a couple of days and then it just becomes…a kind of Chinese fire drill at least in my opinion. If you’re too rigid in your plan it’s not going to be able to – you’re not going to be able to fully apply it to whatever it is you’re doing. So for me half a plan to start with and that quickly went out the window.

Penn Jillette: My plan was actually from the philosopher Mike Tyson who said everyone has a plan until they get hit. And everybody does have a plan until they get hit. And the instant that something doesn’t go the way you planned especially with this particular group of people all plans go out the window. I believe that some people that what is a little bit depressing about working on the show is that even people who suspend their morality completely and are willing to do anything don’t do it well enough to do damage. I saw people who were willing to do anything to win and you could see that clearly that they had let go of their morality completely and they still didn’t win. I mean it’s like a guy who decides to rob a liquor store with a shotgun and everybody looks at him and goes get out of here and he goes okay. He’s already done the moral transgression and he still failed at his task.

Aubrey O’Day: Yes I agree with Penn and Adam. I don’t think that this is a show that you really can be strategized with.

Question: Can you share some of the wildest things we can expect to see this season?

Aubrey O’Day: I think that this season is definitely the most wild season of Celebrity Apprentice that there has been. There’s a lot of fights early on. There’s a lot of fights throughout. We have the biggest cast we’ve ever had in Celebrity Apprentice history. We start out this year with 18 people. There are obviously a lot of really big names on the men’s side. The men’s side definitely started off with a stronger name representation then the women’s side. And I think that probably the women delivered the show this year in regards to the drama because we were definitely acting like females which i hate to admit that. And there’s a lot of shocking language. There’s a lot of shocking accusations. And there’s a lot of shocking fights that go down. And I think that it will be the best season in Celebrity Apprentice that there ever has been.

Adam Carolla: I’ll tell you I know we’re not supposed to give away too much but somewhere around Episode 5 Clay Aiken announces he’s straight. And I know he just shocked the world there. But he’s – he went into the closet and announced he was straight. So look forward to that.

Aubrey O’Day: And then Clay Aiken and I also made out in the finale too and Penn danced. He did the jig.

Penn Jillette: The other thing is that the really interesting thing that’s way out of character for Trump and for NBC is that one of the tasks actually involved getting rid of mosquitoes in sub-Sahara Africa and curing malaria. We kind of crossed over into the Bill Gates area and we’re doing a lot of epidemiology and biology on this. But I thought was fascinating that from the first time in history celebrities actually got together and cared about another person. But that was just for only like four hours.

Question: Last season Gary Busey and Meatloaf were so volatile. Who were the volatile ones this season?

Aubrey O’Day: Arsenio Hall. Arsenio Hall.

Question: Was there any tension or table flipping between Teresa and Victoria Gotti throughout the season? Did you guys get to see any drama unfold between the two of them?

Aubrey O’Day: No those two were pussycats and all we’re about to do is show the world that those two definitely weren’t of the stars of the show and that people were crazier than them.

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