‘Apprentice’ Producers Recall Particular Set ‘Stench’ They Just Couldn’t Shake Off

The potential set for “The Apprentice” just didn’t pass the smell test.

That’s according to producers on Donald Trump’s business reality show who have detailed the stale scent they encountered when they first checked out the 26th floor of Trump Tower in 2003, amid pre-production of the program.

“The first thing they noticed was the stench, a musty carpet odor that followed them like an invisible cloud,” New York Times reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig wrote in their new book “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success.” The Times published an adapted excerpt on Saturday.

There were also “scores of chips in the finish of the wooden desks and credenzas” and “the décor felt long out of date, making the space seem like a time capsule from when Donald J. Trump opened the building early in his first rise to fame,” per the Times’ journalists.

“When you go into the office and you’re hearing ‘billionaire,’ even ‘recovering billionaire,’ you don’t expect to see chipped furniture, you don’t expect to smell carpet that needs to be refreshed in the worst, worst way,” said Bill Pruitt, one of the said producers. “The whole thing was absurd to all of us,” said fellow producer Alan Blum, per the Times article.

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