Last night, Kristine Lefebvre received perhaps the most abrupt firing in the history of The Apprentice. After enduring a shouting match between Frank and Heidi, Trump fired Heidi and then immediately turned to Kristine and fired her. Without a chance to defend herself, Kristine was fired for printing a seemingly wrong phone number on her team’s brochure. That’s just one of the many subjects we touch on in our interview with Kristine, which also includes her view of Trump’s obsession with Nicole.
You can find both the written transcript and the full mp3 audio of the interview below.
How did you find yourself on The Apprentice? Were you a fan of the show?
I watched a lot in the beginning. I hadn’t watched it the last couple of seasons. There was a casting call that went out sort of at the last minute for lawyers and I had received a call from a good friend of mine. He said “You know, they’re looking for lawyers.” It was really the last round for casting, so I said “Why not?” Me doing The Apprentice came from a completely different place than most people. I had, six months earlier, a radical hysterectomy due to cervical cancer and then six weeks before the show started, I had gone through a failed adoption. So, when the opportunity sort of presented itself I said, “You know, everything happens for a reason and why not?” There wasn’t much that was going to come negative from it for me, in my perspective.
On last night’s show, you’re partnership with Nicole, obviously, didn’t work out very well. How difficult was it working with her?
You know, this task it was extremely difficult. On the task before, on the SmartMouth task, it was easy. I think this task she was really effected by Tim’s firing and I think she was distracted by that and, because Nicole sells condos for a living, in her mind she didn’t need to do any work. She kept saying, “All we need to do is get up there and tell Mr. Trump that we’re going to sell his towers.” And I’m like “No Nicole, the task, according to the dossier, is to create a multi-sensory presentation.” So, unless Nicole thinks her voice raiding every single nerve in my body is multi-sensory, it wasn’t going to be enough. And, so, I was focused on trying to put together the deal which we needed and focus on trying to put together the brochure that we needed. And when Nicole said she wanted to go to sleep it was perfectly fine with me, because if she didn’t want anything constructive to do with the video anyway, I thought, let her go to sleep. And, she’s got her Power Point presentation and I’m going to have to own this part of the presentation and that’s fine with me.
The weird thing about your firing is that it looked like (and you said) that you didn’t get a chance to defend yourself…
That’s exactly how it happened.
Had you been able to defend yourself, do you think that Nicole would’ve been the one sent home?
Absolutely. I 100% believe if I had the opportunity to defend myself Nicole would’ve gone home or at least gone home with me. If Nicole would’ve gone home with me, I would’ve been fine, because when Trump announced the task he said that we won and we lost as a team. And then he changes it in the middle and says we’re going to fire one from each team. But, had I had the opportunity to defend myself, I would’ve explained to him that the only thing that Nicole did was her presentation, which sucked, and the Power Point, which she couldn’t even get to work. So, the parts of the presentation that she was so passionate about and thought were going to win it, she did terrible on. But for some reason he was just turning a blind eye to that. So, the fact that I was willing to really take 95% of the load on my shoulders and there happened to be a mistake in that, I go down. But i do need to clarify: that is a Trump phone number. It’s to the media center. If you go on the Trump Towers in Vegas website that number was on the contact page, versus being the sales number. So, when Nicole goes out and calls the phone number and comes back in, she is completely throwing me under the bus when she says “Oh, it’s not even a Trump number.”
What do you think was the impetus for Trump not allowing you to defend yourself? Did Heidi and Frank’s argument go on so long that it just frustrated Trump?
Oh, Heidi and Frank went on and on and on and on and on…and on. I think he was exhausted, for one. I think he was just over it and it was easy, you know? But I also think there’s something strange with him and Nicole. He loves that girl. I don’t know if it’s a daughterly love, I don’t if it’s some weird fantasy, I don’t know if it’s some weird threesome love with Tim. I don’t know, but there’s some crazy love there and I think he knows that if I defended myself, he could not have justified firing me. I don’t think he wanted to give me the opportunity and I do think that he was truly tired. I mean, that boardroom went on forever.
What do you have coming up in the future?
Well, I am back at work, being a lawyer. And my husband, who made an appearance on the show last week, we are looking for a location to open his own restaurant. So, that’s really where, besides my work, where our energy is focused. So, hopefully we’re looking to get something up and running by the end of the year.
(Interview Conducted by Oscar Dahl)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
