Mark Burnett Cast Donald Trump as a Genius Boss. America Forgot It Was Casting.
I helped cast TV narcissists for a living, and I think we accidentally helped make a president.
Back in 2000, I was an associate producer on ESPN’s 2 Minute Drill. Kenny Mayne hosted it, and people like Rich Eisen sat on the panel. Contestants answered rapid-fire sports trivia for cash. It was basically a sports nerd’s dream show.
But nobody at home knew how we actually picked the players.
We worked out of Mark Burnett’s office in NYC. It felt more like a talent agency than a TV company. Burnett was hot off Survivor at the time. He’d go on to make The Voice, Shark Tank, and a little reality show called The Apprentice. That one starred some NYC real estate guy named Donald Trump.
Here’s how casting really worked.
We didn’t pick the people who knew the most about sports. We picked the people we thought would be fun to watch, even when their worst traits were the whole appeal.
The guy who knew every World Series winner since 1903 was boring, so we passed.
The guy who seemed like a lunatic during casting, boasted too much, or seemed like he was off his meds - that guy was TV gold.
And many of the people who auditioned knew what we were looking for. It was a symbiotic relationship.
We wanted to cast loudmouths and the know-it-alls. We wanted people whose egos were way bigger than their brains. They weren’t always bad people. They were just the ones who’d yell, flail around, and maybe melt down on camera if they missed a question.
We didn’t invent this trick, by the way. That’s how most reality shows get cast. Viewers love watching someone win big or crash hard, and the wilder the person, the better the ratings.
Burnett clearly used the same playbook on The Apprentice.
Trump was perfect for it.
That wasn’t cause he was some genius businessman. It was cause his ego made great TV. He truly thought he was the smartest guy in every room and the best deal-maker in history. The whole show was built around that belief. The boardroom scenes, the “You’re fired” line, and the contestants basically bowing to him all sold the idea that he was a brilliant boss in a gold tower.
Years later, it hit me. We weren’t just casting narcissists. We were making them.
Every time bad behavior got someone more screen time, we rewarded it. Every time a big ego got a callback, we rewarded that too.
Putting these people on TV wasn’t really the problem. The problem was that a lot of viewers couldn’t tell the act from the real thing. They thought the characters were real. They thought the traits we picked for ratings were things to admire.
On 2 Minute Drill, the stakes were pretty low. Who cares if some hothead got a trophy for being rude about sports trivia?
The Apprentice was different. That show didn’t just show off Trump’s ego. It sold it as proof that he was great at business. Viewers who couldn’t see through it started to believe the same stuff Trump believed about himself.
They bought the act so hard that they forgot it was an act.
I can draw a straight line from those casting calls to where we are now. We spent years rewarding people for their worst habits. Then we acted shocked when they kept doing those things in real life. We built a culture where being the loudest jerk in the room was a real path to success.
Trump isn’t the only one, either. Reality TV is still packed with people who learned that their ugliest traits are their best sales pitch. TV doesn’t just show us who we are - it helps create the culture.
That’s why I don’t watch tv anymore.
Just kidding - lol - my favorite tv show is Drag Race which features some of the most entertaining narcissists on the planet!