This season of "Celebrity Apprentice" has certainly seen its fair share of friction between cast members, from Trace Adkins' battle with Marilu Henner to Gary Busey turning on his teammates in the boardroom. While the show's final two contestants, Adkins and magician Penn Jillette, may be good pals off-camera, Donald Trump says that we can expect a little friendly feuding on Sunday's finale.
"We have a tremendous cast of celebrities that each of (the finalists) have brought with them," Trump said during a conference call with the press Thursday. "It’s a very tough group of people.The game is played very hard, it’s a little bit nasty in a couple of cases but overall I think it’s going to be great television."
Trump told reporters that he has no clue who he will choose to hire during Sunday's live finale.
"Sometime I know and sometimes I don’t," he said. "I will tell you honestly, in this case, I don’t. A lot of times I will have a pretty good idea as to who it’s going to be. I’ll give you an example, when Bret (Michaels) won. They flew him here in an ambulatory plane. He was almost dead three days before, with the heart and the whole thing. (Michaels had a stroke that was later tied to a hole in his heart.) He could barely walk on the stage. Honestly, I think if I hadn’t chosen him I would have been run out of town!"
Although "Celebrity Apprentice" is now in its 13th season, Trump said has no trouble finding celebrities that are willing to risk facing him in the boardroom.
"Casting the first time was hard because nobody knew what to expect after we went to the celebrity concept," he said. "After that, it became really easy to get people to sign on. It really has been good for people's careers."
Trump added that celebrities want to be a part of his show because it doesn't require them to do anything they normally wouldn't do, unlike those other star-based reality shows.
"The nice thing is that they don’t have to dance and they don’t have to do things that maybe aren’t in their comfort zones but they get this tremendous popularity if they have what it takes," Trump said. "So it’s easy to cast, actually."
Although they won't be dancing, Jillette and Adkins said they will be putting their talents to use on Sunday's finale.
"Trace is going to do a song, and I’m going to play bass with him," Jillette said. "And I’m going to do some magic with Teller, so besides the 'Celebrity Apprentice' there will also be magic and music."
While it may seem odd that Jillette will join his competitor Adkins in a jam session on the show, Trump said it's because the final two share a friendship rarely seen in the final two.
"One thing that’s a little bit different is that these guys genuinely like each other," he said. "Usually we have people that get into the finals that do not like each other. I usually like that better, by the way. These two people really like each other, but it’s still great television."