Annie Duke Reveals Strategy for Celebrity Apprentice Finale Against Joan Rivers

Poker News Daily: Congratulations on making the finals of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice. In your opinion, how do you measure up against Joan Rivers?

Duke: Joan Rivers is Joan Rivers and that’s a big battle for me. It’s one of the reasons she’s in the finals. If you look at her performance, she only won half of the challenges she was involved in and lost against me as Project Manager. She raised very little money. She does things that wouldn’t be allowed in most workplaces. She also committed the cardinal sin, which was quitting. However, I understand that this is not a real workplace; it’s a television show and Joan is Joan.

PND: How exciting is it to be in the final two heading into this week’s live three hour Celebrity Apprentice season finale?

Duke: I’m very excited. I’m very proud of what I’ve accomplished, win or lose. No matter what happens, I’ve raised a ton of money for charity. That’s what my goal was coming into the show, so I’m really happy. I’m very happy to fight for the win against Joan and I don’t think I’m a lay-up in any way, shape, or form. If I were judging the show, of course, I’d pick me.

PND: The stats are pretty stacked in your favor: You’re 2-0 as Project Manager, have never been selected to come back into the boardroom as part of a losing effort, and raised nearly one-third of the money on the show.

Duke: If the show is about fundraising for charity, I win. I’ve raised $200,000 and she’s raised $30,000. If the show is about being effective in challenges, I win. If it’s about being an effective leader and an effective Project Manager, I win. I won against her head to head and won once by writing a jingle against Clint Black. When you look at the categories you’d judge a win on, I have her crushed.

Her argument appears to be that I’m a bad person. Me being a bad person isn’t an argument for her winning. What’s the evidence of me being a bad person anyway? I never threw Brande Roderick under the bus. The only person who spewed words like “white trash” and “Hitler” was her. The only person who talked crap behind people’s backs was her. One side of her mouth accuses me of being self-centered, while the other side throws a tantrum and talks about being the number one icon in the history of comedy.

Piers Morgan pointed that out really well. He is very much of my mindset, which is that you can’t say it’s okay because Joan was defending her daughter, Melissa Rivers. It’s never okay to call someone Hitler. They knew what they signed up for. When you’re faced with the reality of someone being fired, you don’t have the right to throw a tantrum. Show me a workplace where people call each other “white trash” or “Hitler.” In a real workplace, that language would not be acceptable.

PND: Tell us about the process of creating a jingle for Chicken of the Sea tuna against Grammy Award winning country artist Clint Black.

Duke: Brande and I were freaking out in the morning. We felt, at that moment, that the game was rigged. We felt like the world was against us and for Joan Rivers. Here we were in a situation where we had to write a song against Clint Black, so we decided to just have fun with it. I was very sure that we were going to lose and I was going to be fired. When we got to the war room, we started researching jingle lyrics and that’s when everything became okay. It was a branding challenge, not a song writing challenge. Jingles aren’t rocket science. This isn’t Shakespeare. This isn’t Grammy Award winning songwriting. I was in a jingle writing competition. After I closed my computer, it took me 10 minutes to write the jingle. There is no question that Clint’s song was better. If we were writing a song, he’d beat me pretty badly.

When we went into boardroom, I didn’t care. I felt like I had been given such an impossible task and that Brande and I had produced something far beyond what we were capable of. When we were sitting there, Don Jr. read off the positives of our product and his only negative was that we didn’t mention that Chicken of the Sea came in pouches. That’s when I knew we had won.

PND: Many members of the poker playing community will be tuned into NBC this Sunday at 8:00pm ET for the three hour live finale. What can we expect?

Duke: I’m going to have to fight for myself. My main focus will not just be about what I brought to challenges in terms of my ability to execute, win, and fundraise. I’m also going to talk about the fact that Joan quit and spewed epithets that, on previous Apprentice seasons, weren’t considered okay. There is some big drama in this finale. It’s pretty amazing.

In last week’s boardroom, I said that I respect Joan and I stick by that. By this time in the game, I figured out, in my opinion, that Joan was attacking me because she saw I was a strong player. Maybe she manages to get me fired, but Donald Trump loves a fight. Given that Joan wasn’t raising money and her ideas weren’t getting executed during challenges, attacking me brings her along in the game. It’s like a freeroll for her: Either I get fired or it’s a fight to the end of the season. Brande and I talked about how she deserved to be in the final two. Right before the final boardroom, I looked at her and said that she had no shot because Joan knew what she was doing. I respect Joan’s ability to think of that strategy.

PND: What will the determining factor in Donald Trump’s mind?

Duke: A lot of it for me depends on how much people believe what Joan says. What they see on television is someone who is confident, but can rub people the wrong way. What they didn’t see was someone who lied. What they didn’t see was someone who backstabbed. You have to believe that I called Brande an idiot for any of Joan’s behavior to make sense. I didn’t stab anyone in the back.

PND: Piers Morgan told Donald Trump that you have the ability to let personal attacks roll right off your back. Is that true?

Duke: I left that show feeling like I had posttraumatic stress disorder. If you talk to my close friends, they’ll tell you how deeply affected I was by what Joan was saying. You can’t be called those things and not be affected by them. In poker, you’re not supposed to scream and cry if you get sucked out on (unless you’re Phil Hellmuth), so I’ve learned to keep my composure in the face of adversity. It also comes from being a mom. My kids would come home in tears because someone said something nasty to them. What I say is, “If you had a really important thing you wanted to ask about, would you ask that person their opinion?” Would I ask Joan Rivers for advice? No, I don’t value her opinion. How could her opinion of me have any sway over me?

When people say hurtful things, they’re looking for a reaction. They get off on it otherwise they wouldn’t say it. It makes them feel powerful. Why would I react? It’s my choice to give them that power. By not responding to her, it drove her batty. Joan couldn’t stand that she wasn’t getting a reaction out of me. She kept escalating the level of attacks trying to get me to come back at her. My children and I talk about this when we watch Celebrity Apprentice and it’s the big lesson I give them: I’m asking them to do as I do.

PND: Readers of Poker News Daily called you out for comparing Joan Rivers to a cancer. Can you comment on it?

Duke: She was a negative force in the room when we got down to the final four. The health of the room was dropping. Then, Joan left and Brande, Jesse James, and I finally became excited that we had made the final four. It was an appropriate analogy. It’s not disrespectful to people with cancer. I don’t regret that comment and consider it an accurate representation of what happened.