NBC: 'Celebrity Apprentice' will be back, Trump won't
NBC's bringing back "Celebrity Apprentice" in 2016-17 season, but without the Donald. "At the moment we're sort of separated," NBC entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt told reporters Thursday at the Television Critics Association's summer meetings.
NBC's divorce from Donald Trump is nearly final.
"At the moment we're sort of separated," NBC entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt told reporters Thursday at the Television Critics Association's summer meetings.
"We're almost done" selling off the network's interest in the Miss USA pageant, which Trump co-owns and whose July 12 broadcast NBC dumped after the Republican presidential candidate described Mexican immigrants as "rapists."
And though there'll be no "Celebrity Apprentice" in NBC's coming season, it will be back in 2016-17, Greenblatt said, "with a new host."
Apparently there's been a lot of interest in being the person who gets to bark "You're fired!" to whiny C-listers.
It just won't be Trump. "He's never coming back," said Greenblatt.
All that said, his former TV boss described Trump as "a lovely guy" with whom the network had a "congenial relationship."
Other nuggets from Greenblatt's session with the critics:
-- Upper Darby's Tina Fey is at work on another show for the network, to be produced with her writing partner Robert Carlock and created by their "30 Rock" protege Tracey Wigfield, who shared an Emmy with Fey for the final episode of that show.
-- When I asked Greenblatt if he felt a twinge of regret for having let Fey and Carlock's Emmy-nominated "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" -- which NBC owns -- go to Netflix, he said, "We're whores for Emmy nominations just like anyone else," but "to know Tina Fey is to love her and we wanted to put that show in the best place for it to have success."
-- NBC's extended "Tonight Show" host Jimmy Fallon's through the 2020-21 season.
-- "Heroes Reborn," which critics still haven't seen -- too many special effects not ready, apparently -- will have a two-hour premiere on Sept. 24, and its 13-episode run will have no repeats. It's also premiering at the Toronto Film Festival, which accepted it on the basis of a script (which TV critics haven't yet seen, either).
-- NBC's acquired the rights to "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" for the next two seasons.