14 DAY TRIAL // Celebrity Apprentice kicked off a brand new season, and as is the case with each new edition, someone was fired on the first episode. That someone was Keshia Knight Pulliam, best known for her role on the iconic TV series “The Cosby Show,” with Donald Trump showing her the door because she refused to turn to her TV dad for a donation to charity.
That in itself isn’t the reason why social media and industry blogs are buzzing right now: the fact that Trump fired her because she wouldn’t call Bill Cosby, who is now involved in one of the biggest rape scandals of our times, is.
What happened
Celebrities grouped and held a bake sale for charity, with each member of the teams having the option to call on their celebrity friends for donations. Naturally, the more of these friends they turned to, the more money they stood to raise.
Because Keshia worked with Bill Cosby on the show many years ago, she was told to call him up but she refused. At the end of the episode, standing in front of the panel, she got read the riot act for not calling him – and was then booted for having discarded an amazing opportunity to raise money.
Both Trumps, Donald and Ivanka, and Piers Morgan, but also Keshia’s own teammates stressed that this was her biggest mistake as project manager, because she had one relation she could exploit for money but she refused to.
No one wanted to hear about how she wasn’t comfortable calling Cosby and ask for money when they hadn’t spoken on the phone “in years” and had minimal contact at infrequent Cosby events.
Capitalizing on the rape scandal
And this is where things get interesting: these scenes were shot one year ago, when Bill Cosby wasn’t yet involved in one of the biggest rape scandals of modern times. The allegations go back decades, but it’s just now that Cosby is starting to pay the price for his alleged crimes – to the fans, not legally speaking, because said alleged crimes have been written off.
Basically, over a dozen women have stepped forward to claim he drugged and raped them, after luring them to an isolated location on the false promise of helping them with their career.
Again, at the time this episode from Celebrity Apprentice was shot, the scandal hadn’t yet broken, though these allegations have been around for a very long time.
It’s NBC and the producers’ decision to leave this segment in that’s making many raise an eyebrow. Trump is executive producer on the series, which means he gets the final say in what stays and what goes in terms of footage.
By choosing to have this 3-minute discussion about Bill Cosby on the show, when it could have easily been trimmed down, he’s showing a clear inclination to capitalizing on the scandal, voices online are saying.
So while Trump is pounding his chest with his fist that Keshia should have cast her embarrassment aside and called Cosby “for charity,” he’s actually revealing that he doesn’t care squat about the cause but only about the ratings. And good ratings he got: because today, everybody is talking about the show and the stupid reason he fired Keshia for.