Baroness Karren Brady has finally spoken out after reducing two contestants to tears on The Apprentice, months after Marnie Swindells won Lord Alan Sugar’s investment.
Marnie, Dani Donovan, Megan Hornby, Rochelle Anthony, and Victoria Goulbourne reached the final hurdle during the infamous interview stage, in which Claude Littner, Linda Plant, Mike Soutar, and Baroness Brady returned as Lord Sugar’s trusted advisors.
Dani and Victoria were both reduced to tears during Baroness Brady’s interview with them, proving that the dreaded interviews were more emotive than anticipated.
When speaking with Victoria about her business, she quickly found herself in need of a tissue due to her numbers not adding up.
‘It’s a pretty big mistake,’ Baroness Brady pointed out, before Victoria burst into tears.
Not long later, Dani was the next to ask for the tissues, after telling Baroness Brady that she ‘didn’t think [she] would get this far’.
‘Don’t have faith in yourself?’ Baroness Brady questioned.
‘To be perfectly honest, no, I just think I hold myself back a little back,’ a tearful Dani replied.
Viewers blasted Baroness Brady over the scenes, with one writing: ‘You’ve physically humiliated and made two women cry on the apprentice for what reason? Just to try and get some extra viewers? Shameful Karen. “set your sights high” so Karen can belittle them on national TV and make you cry.’
However, she’s now addressed the backlash, insisting she didn’t say ‘anything to her that was mean’.
The 54-year-old said: ‘The contestant got upset because I said to her that of all the candidates, I was the most disappointed in her business plan. That was the truth.
‘I didn’t say anything to her that was mean, I just said that out of everybody I was the most disappointed that her business plan was a letdown.
‘You know, when you forget to put the staff costs in, your stock costs, you get your rent costs wrong, it’s not a great way to start.
‘It is never deliberately set out to upset anybody, I would never want to do that.’
She continued to The Express: ‘Is [the show] easy all the time? No. Is business easy all the time? No, it isn’t. Do you have to have resilience to get through it? You absolutely do. I cannot tell you how hard it is to run your own business.’
Baroness Brady quickly replied: ‘It’s Baroness Brady to you. My friends call me Karren.’
This comes after Lord Sugar pledged to make adjustments to the interviews stage, claiming that this year’s was “very harsh.”
‘I think we need to tone that down a bit. I found it hard to watch,’ he admitted.
He added to The Times: ‘Unfortunately when that was recorded, I wasn’t there.
‘Anyway, I’m not making any excuses. When I saw it in the end, I thought, “This is too harsh”, and we’re going to tone it down now.’
The Apprentice is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
Source My Celebrity Life.