Palm Beach Post Q&A With Marisa

Despite writing a blog yesterday that can only be described as mean spirited and ignorant, Palm Beach Post television writer Kevin D. Thompson's relatively nice Q&A with Marisa yesterday appeared on the front page of the Accent section of today's Post. It is reproduced here:

Q&A with Marisa of 'Apprentice'
By Kevin D. Thompson

Palm Beach Post Television Writer

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

You're fired!

Two words no one on The Apprentice wants to hear.

Unfortunately Marisa DeMato, the class-action attorney from Wellington, got that dreaded pink slip from Donald Trump on the NBC show Sunday. She also got labeled as derisive by her teammates and was even to told to "shut up" by The Donald.

But the 28-year-old DeMato, who works for the Boca Raton law firm of Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins, didn't go down quietly. And she was equally candid during our brief chat in which she discussed everything from her dismissed chicken suit idea to why NBC played a major role in her firing.

Question: Why did you want to go on The Apprentice?

Answer: To be honest with you, I was always really a big fan of The Apprentice and watched every season. I was watching it one night and Trump came on and he was pitching the next season and I thought, "I might as well give it a shot." I like a challenge.

Q: What was the experience like?

A: The experience was great. Since my ultimate goal is to run for political office, I felt like it was really good training for me to get ready. You have to learn disappointment and to learn to pick yourself up after something doesn't necessarily go your way.

Q: Your ultimate goal is to run for political office...

A: (interrupts): Yes, my nickname was The Politico. Everyone on the show called me The Senator. That's ultimately what I want to do. That's always been my goal since I was very young.

Q: What was your strategy going into the show?

A: I actually had a great strategy. I came in having done a lot of research on the companies, on demographics on socio-economics, everything I thought would be useful to me and my team in doing tasks in the Los Angeles area. I also came in with a really great winning project manager strategy. I felt the tasks were won and lost because the project manager didn't know his or her teammates well enough. For example, I am really creative. I am really great at organizing. I am really great at public speaking. I am not good with numbers — you would not want to use me as an accountant. I used myself as an example. I felt like this was key for our team to win. Heidi did implement the project manager strategy and she also took credit for it, which started the process of me seeing her for what she is.

Q: What is she?

A: Someone who is clearly not trustworthy.Heidi started to see me as a threat.... She knew that I had good, winning ideas and she knew that I was vocal about them (and) that I wasn't going to fly under the radar and just continue to agree and shake my head at everything she said.

Q: Looking back at your brief time on the show, would you do anything differently?

A: I wouldn't do anything differently because I feel like I was on the show as I am in life. I'm very straightforward. If I have something to say, I say it to everyone. Every week I put my neck on the line when other people just sat there very silent. And it would've been very easy to probably conduct myself that way, but it wouldn't have been me. It seemed like I was really overzealous about the chicken suit... but what America didn't get a chance to see was that team Arrow did use the official Pollo Loco chicken suit and they won. And NBC conveniently left that out. I was not the person who should've been fired.

Q: So team Arrow had people dressed up as chickens? (Both teams had to sell a new chicken dish by the fast-food chain Pollo Loco.)

A: They had one person dressed up in a chicken costume as part of their marketing strategy.

Q: And NBC left that out? Why do you think they did that?

A: Because they couldn't justify my firing. Because most of America doesn't agree that I should've been the person who was fired on Sunday and if they had shown team Arrow with (a person in a) chicken costume standing on the corner with the sign as I had suggested..., it would've been virtually impossible for them to justify my firing.

Q: Tell me why you thought dressing two people up in chicken suits would've made the difference in the Pollo Loco task.

A: We had four or five hours to really cause a stir around this drive-thru and around this restaurant to sell this bowl. Let's face it, it's very hard to miss a chicken standing in the middle of an intersection.

Q: What rubbed some people the wrong way was how you described your idea as "grandiose" and "original." Talk about that a little bit.

A: In the grand scheme of things, we've all seen chickens on the side of the road, but in the context of what my group put out for marketing, my ideas were much more original and were much bigger than what Heidi made us go with.

Q: Getting fired is hard enough. But to get fired on national television must be really tough. Plus, you were the first person fired from your team. How did you handle that?

A: It was the first time I was fired in anything in life. I tried to take it as well as I possibly could. I tried to tell myself that it was a learning experience. I'm so proud of the fact that I was coming up with ideas, I was working hard for the team and I fought for myself. That was a very, very difficult boardroom. I was fighting off eight people who needed to see themselves in that boardroom and were using me as a scapegoat. And I also had to deal with Donald Trump, who is a difficult, powerful person.

Q: You had a memorable boardroom session in which Trump had to tell you to "shut up" and take it easy. Why were you interrupting him so much?

A: In the context of him telling me to shut up, he said "shut up, I'm actually trying to defend you." What he was trying to say, "You're fighting, take it easy." He recognized that I was fighting for my life.

Q: But the point was he was trying to defend you and you still kept talking and he was annoyed with that.

A: If I was the reason the team had lost, maybe I wouldn't have felt that sense of desperation to really fight so hard for myself to save myself. But I knew I was being unfairly targeted in the boardroom. So you feel more compelled to get your side of the story out and if that resulted in me interrupting people in the boardroom, well, it was more of a survival of the fittest.

Q: No one on your team seemed like they wanted to work with you. They called you abrasive and disruptive and someone who focuses on the stupid little things. Why do you think they felt that way?

A: I think for the most part, that was inaccurate and based on editing. I was not abrasive. I was not difficult to work with. I helped take the team to a win on task two with the pink bathing suit. I got along very well with the group and there was never any real dissension.

Q: What did you learn about yourself?

A: I learned that I am much stronger than I thought I was and I knew that I was a pretty strong person going into the process. The fact that I faced my teammates, I faced the boardroom, I faced a firing that was unfair and I really think that says a lot. It was good practice and good training for me to eventually run for office because I think the political arena is probably 10 times more vicious....