On March 1st, the second season of “The Celebrity Apprentice” will debut on NBC. Among the 16 contestants vying for prize money for charity is poker pro Annie Duke, a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner and one of the most successful female poker players in the history of the game. Duke will be playing for Refugees International, a sister charity to Ante Up for Africa, which she founded along with Don Cheadle and Norman Epstein. She sat down with Poker News Daily to discuss her experience on the popular reality program.
Poker News Daily: Give us the background to your involvement with The Celebrity Apprentice.
Duke: When I found out that I had the opportunity to be on the show, I had never watched The Apprentice before. I didn’t want to do any reality television and was unhappy about going into the meeting with the show’s producers having not watched it before. They told me that during the previous season, they raised $1 million for charity. This isn’t reality television for the sake of it; this has a good purpose.
They asked me what my strategy was and I said I didn’t know. They told me how the show works and I realized that it was a really interesting game. Things that would get me into trouble on other shows wouldn’t get me into trouble in this game. What I found out is that you’re divided into two teams. When you face elimination, you’re facing elimination by Donald Trump, not from a television audience or by other teammates.
You don’t have to worry about a lot of the things that you have to worry about in other games. In “Survivor,” you have to worry about being hugely confident. If you show that, your teammates will boot you off. In The Apprentice, you can reveal yourself to be competent because it works for you in this situation. Your teammates will want to keep you around because if your team wins, you won’t have to face elimination. Also, if you show you’re competent, Trump won’t eliminate you.
PND: What aspects of playing poker, if any, carried over into The Celebrity Apprentice?
Duke: The game was about managing expectations and making sure that you’re putting yourself in the roles that are most advantageous to you. It was very important to be able to manage the direction of the task without becoming Project Manager. It’s the same in poker. You have to manage the way people act towards you and how they perceive you. You need to have them behave in certain ways without damaging your own reputation.
PND: Was the experience what you expected it to be or what was different about it?
Duke: There were definitely aspects of it that took me by surprise. I had no idea that the days were so long. Some of them were 5:00am to Midnight. Some of the people on the show also really surprised me, including former Playboy Playmate of the Year Brande Roderick. She’s a really cool chick and is really smart and really hard-working. She’s also really nice. In one of the more unlikely turn of events, she and I have become really good friends. What I really admire about her is that she’s good at leveraging perceptions to her advantage. If people are going to think of you as some dumb hot chick and you’re not, then just leverage it to your advantage. It’s more of a poker player’s way to approach it.
Somebody else who is surprised me is Herschel Walker. He’s a really cool dude. He runs his own business and he’s very smart. He woke up at 3:00am to go running every day. He is also a super nice guy.
PND: Tell us about balancing commitments like The Celebrity Apprentice with raising four children.
Duke: The Celebrity Apprentice was really hard for me because I was away from my kids. That was a little bit tough. But, I’ve had these discussions with my kids before and they know I founded this charity and that’s why I do the work that I do. They know sometimes that stuff takes me away. They’ll even talk about Ante Up for Africa to other people. They understand why I’m doing it and they’re onboard with it. I’ve had a pretty easy life for someone who’s trying to raise children because a lot of what I do, I’ve been able to be home for.
PND: Explain the importance of your chosen charity, Ante Up for Africa. Is this a prime opportunity for it to receive national exposure?
Duke: It was the only reason that I ended up doing the show. The thing that made me say yes was the amount of exposure it could get. I played for a partner charity to Ante Up for Africa called Refugees International. Every task that you do on The Celebrity Apprentice is benefiting a charity. It’s not about wanting only my charity to benefit; there were other charities that were amazing.
I love promoting poker, but I also like hiding in my house. People think of me as gregarious and someone who’s not shy, but it’s the initial contact with strangers that I find very hard. That’s one of the things in poker that I have trouble with. People approached me, mostly when poker was first booming, to have a reality show about my four kids. I didn’t want to put my children or my private life on television.
Going into the show, I had a mathematical model of how much money you needed to raise and what parts of the tasks you needed to do in order to have the highest chance of success. I had that all mapped out. I ended up really enjoying the experience because I was playing a game. I probably should have been saying all along to my manager to pitch me for The Celebrity Apprentice.
Duke: What’s been the reaction among your poker playing peers to the news that you were on the show?
Duke: There are a lot of people I talked to because there are a lot of poker players who I wanted to come out and do the show. The universal reaction was that it’s awesome. I think that people are going to view poker players in a different way, not in regards to what I actually do, but people usually think of poker players as nasty and selfish.
We in the poker community know that’s not true. We know that there’s a large population who are generous and the amount of money raised through poker for charity is astonishing. Poker is a great fundraising tool. All of the money for Ante Up for Africa has come from the poker industry and it’s been about $2 million over two years. I want to let the world know that poker players are really cool people who can step up to the plate and give. That’s been the reaction.
I held my appearance on the show as close to the vest as I could. I didn’t tell anyone I was going. When I got there, I realized that the teams were divided into men and women. Men are fine at you coming straight on with criticism. With women, you have to go sideways at it. With men, I can say that their play was stupid and they’re cool with it. In fact, they like me being direct with them and saying when they do something wrong. With women, they get a little upset. When they deal with people, women are sometimes worried about hurting someone’s feelings. When you’re at a poker table, you’re not worried about other players’ feelings. We’re very direct in this community.