The Celebrity Apprentice

Surya Yalamanchili was fired by Donald Trump last night on The Apprentice after a nice run on the show.  He is the only Apprentice to switch teams during the season and, although he didn't mesh too well with his new squad, he still did his best to succeed.  Surya stopped by to speak with us today about his time on the show.

BuddyTV: Can you tell us how you got involved with The Apprentice?  Was it something you always wanted to do?

Surya: It’s actually a funny story.  Two and a half years ago, right after Season 1, they did a casting call here in Cincinnati.  I went out for that and I made it to the final 30 or 25 or something like that but I didn’t make it.  It was like, “Wow, that sucks.”  But I kept staying in touch with them and eventually ended up on this season.  It was a long, drawn-out process.

You seemed to have a tough go of it with Arrow, especially in the last episode; they kind of really played that up.  Was that overblown or was it that miserable for you?

Well, you know, I think it was definitely overblown because they focused so much on one thing, but it was definitely not pleasant.  I would say, even when we won, I was still dealing with Frank and James bad-mouthing me to my face.  Mostly, it was passive aggressive and you know, you saw some of it on TV.  Most of what they said, they said without the benefit of me being able to respond to it.  They just said it to the camera or to each other.  So I guess I didn’t really know the full degree to which they hated me.  Now I do.  It definitely wasn’t all roses. 


How tough is that to watch on TV?

It’s like getting hit in the head with a baseball bat repeatedly. 


Do wish you had talked your own smack to the camera?

Yeah, you know what’s really funny is that, I think, if you don’t talk smack it doesn’t happen.  So maybe if I had talked smack about James or Frank then they would have shown some of the stuff that they had done.  So if I had said, “Frank’s a jerk, he’s always rolling his eyes at me, this and that,” then they would have shown him doing that and then they would have put my quote up there.  But I said, “Frank’s a good guy, we’re just different, very different backgrounds.”  He’s like old-school man, Frank is like, I don’t know.  We’re just so different that we just got to leave it at that.  That’s what I kept saying about Frank, about James, about Stephanie.  Because of that I think they couldn’t show any of it because I never said any of it.