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An interview with Aubrey O’Day

Tonight the latest season of Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice kicks off its fifth season of pitting celebrities and pseudo-celebrities against each other to raise money for each contestant’s hand-chosen charity organization. Most other seasons of the show have had 15 cast members but this season has been super-sized to eighteen and includes members of and advocates for the LGBT community such as American Idol runner-up Clay Aiken, Star Trek actor George Takei (whose hilarious Facebook postings get added to my wall by my mom on a daily basis), hysterical comedian and notorious Queen of Mean Lisa Lampanelli and, last but not least, oft-talked about animal-lover, singer, dancer, reality TV starlet Aubrey O’Day.

We had the opportunity to speak with Aubrey about her participation in the show and why she felt so strongly about raising money for her chosen charity: GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network).

AfterEllen.com: When you were approached to be on Celebrity Apprentice what was your first thought? Were you a regular fan of the show beforehand?

Aubrey O’Day: I had seen the show enough. I mean, I don’t watch too much TV because I’m usually in the studio recording or busy, but I was actually really excited about it from the beginning. I think a lot other people do [the show] to revive their career or because their publicists or manager pushed them into it. And when I took the meeting I was actually really excited and couldn’t wait to start preparing. I mean, I was on my way going to Columbia for law school.

AE: Oh, wow.

AO: So I have a very an intense mind that likes to be strategized and prepared. So after going and meeting and seeing the interest that they had in me I watched all the seasons of Celebrity Apprentice and locked down in my house for a least a couple days and watched every season back to back and kind of made out a map and learned the way they filmed it. I always look at everything from a producer mind. I probably have a stronger producer mind than a talent mind which gets me in trouble sometimes with reality TV. But it’s because I’ve done a lot of reality TV that I have that instinct. I’d say after I watched it all and mapped it all out I was even more excited.

I did it because I wanted to do something new with my life. I wanted to have new challenges. The challenges in my life always revolve around music, fans, acting, performing, singing, writing – I mean, I’ve kind of had the same challenges in a very intense way all the way down to very simple ways for the past six years of my time in the industry and I’m kind of getting to a point where I wanted to see what else I had to offer to the world. I wasn’t sure if I’d be good, I wasn’t sure if I’d go home right away, I wasn’t sure if I’d get there and see that other people were smarter and have better ideas, I wasn’t sure that I’d be the best. I just know that I’ve gone through a lot of hardships in my life and I’ve always been able to come out fighting. I’d say the first week I was a little nervous and I was trying to size it all up and kind of see where I stood in the competition and I realized after the first episode or the first couple days that I definitely should win and I’m one of the smartest people there.

AE: That’s awesome. Do you have any business experience or business education prior to this? If not, I don’t know if you’ve seen those Shannen Doherty commercials but she got her degree online. [Laughs]

AO: They are horrible!

AE: [Laughs] You can just pick up one of those business degrees online and see where that goes.

AO: No, no, I went to UC Irvine and I had to take a variety of classes in order to graduate. I wouldn’t say business studies in particular but I have a family of attorneys and I came into college studying dance. I was a dance major and left college as a political science major and got really into law and political science and government. A lot of the passion I developed in college was for international rights. I wanted to go work internationally with refugees. I got that in junior year of college when I traveled around the world with a program and with my family. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel a lot. And not to like, vacation destinations. I’ve always traveled to third world countries and been involved in the painful aspects of the world more so than the beaches and mai tais.

AE: The mai tais are good too, though. [Laughs]
AO: Right. I learned a lot and I have a very passionate mother that wants to save the world in her own way and I don’t think she ever found her voice and I think she raised a daughter with a very loud voice that is trying to find out what she really wants to stand for.

AE: I think that’s fantastic!

AO: My problem in life is never “What can I do?” more like, “What do I want to do?” because I’m capable of doing a lot and I just haven’t figured out what means the most to me. For instance, it was very hard for me to find a charity because I work with so many different charities. I have my own charity, I’ve traveled around the world working for refugee camps, I’ve worked with battered women’s shelters, I’ve worked with orphans with AIDS – you know, when I was in Cuba with Fidel Castro I worked medicine initiatives and treatments and things like that. So it was hard for me to decide, do I want to help the international community? Do I want to target something more domestic? Should I target something personal? Maybe something that effects more people? Should I do an organization that’s really popular that a lot of people know? Or should I help a smaller organization that not a lot of people know?

AE: That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself.

AO: And by the way, not every celebrity thinks like that. Most celebrities could probably care less, although I’m sure they’d never say that.

AE: Well, sure, that wouldn’t be very good publicity for them.
AO: I mean, this is reality TV. It’s a publicity stunt for everyone; frankly, it’s a publicity stunt for everyone running it. That’s what reality TV is but a lot of good can come from it and that’s the aspect I appreciated with this show. And I also appreciated that there was an element of set up and design and manipulation like any reality show. There isn’t one that doesn’t have that but this one only has that to a small degree. Really what it shows is the reality of how smart you are and how well you can create, perform and sell.

I’m really good friends with Jenna Jameson and her boyfriend, Tito Ortiz, was on the show one year. So I called her and asked for advice because she was there the whole time with him. And they said the best advice is to lay low in the beginning. It’s always the loud ones that go home first. If you lay low and let everyone else talk their face off, you’ll be there in the end. So I got there and tried to tell myself to lay low and not be the abrasive loudmouth that I normally am. And within two and a half minutes of it starting, I defaulted back to being loud, opinionated and abrasive.

AE: Well it must be difficult to lay low if your personality is more flamboyant or you want to let your intelligence shine. So if you’re faced with the first challenge and you have great ideas or you want to weigh-in on a bad idea, it must be difficult to hold your tongue.

AO: I never held my tongue. I tried to be respectful and not trashy. I never hit anyone below the belt but I definitely told the truth, always. I think that’s what the group got to know me as. I never let my friendships with people dictate my truth. I enjoyed certain people more than others. There were people I would have wine with in our rooms and laugh with at night but then I wasn’t protective in the boardroom because at the end of the day, we weren’t on Celebrity Apprentice to make friends or make money for other people’s charities. We were all there to win money for our own charities that we’re passionate about. For mine, I chose GLSEN, specifically campaigning to raise money for anti-bullying campaigns.

When I was trying to figure out which charity to represent, I had it narrowed down to three and then I turned on the TV and saw another youth suicide and it’s just so horrible. I just, I mean, it’s horrible that we have people dying from disease but now you’ve got these people who are perfectly healthy and capable of having great lives who are feeling like they don’t have anyone to root for them or be in their corner and they’re taking their own lives. When I was younger I was bullied and felt like no one was there to advocate for me. But I just pulled up my big girl panties (laughs) and dealt with it. I knew what I wanted to do from a very young age and not everyone is given those tools; not everyone has the teaching that I did.

At the end of the day, I’m one of those people who is always searching for what the meaning of life is in every dumb little thing that I do. I have yet to figure it out but the one thing I have figured is that we’re here to help each other. There would be no purpose of my celebrity and my talent if I didn’t use it to inspire other people. Specifically, I experienced bullying to where I had to be switched out of schools. I experienced bullying to where I was getting beat up all the time. On my worst day I think I ran into the home-ec room and hid in the dryer for an hour so no one would beat me up.

AE: Oh wow!

AO: I think after Playboy everyone just saw me as this pretty, hot girl who was always popular and got her way. And it’s the furthest from the truth. I think I always wanted to be that girl and when I was able to, I did, and I still wasn’t happy. Now I just look like that girl and have better hair and better makeup and more information [Laughs].

AE: I’ve actually been, I guess you could say “following you” since Making The Band’s first season, and you’ve definitely changed. Back then you seemed more introverted. It’s difficult for me to think, or really picture that you were ever bullied. Like, just knowing you as someone who was hand-picked by Diddy to be in his band, it’s difficult to think you went through all of that when you were younger. But I can definitely see a big change in your energy over the past several years.

AO: You want to know what it is? It’s confidence. I think a lot of people, if I were going to give a “hater” perspective of me, they think I’m full of myself. They think I’ve had all this plastic surgery and I’m fake and conceited and uncontrollable and turned into something unapproachable and so Hollywood. It’s really the furthest thing from the truth. I am such a nerd, my favorite thing to this day are my SpongeBob SquarePants slippers. I dress up to go on a red carpet because it’s fun and if anybody else had the opportunity to dress up and feel special, they would because it’s just fun. But that doesn’t say anything about me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people just walk up to me and squeeze my boobs just to see if they’re real. Yeah I used to be 90-lbs when I started Making The Band and I don’t weigh that anymore. I got curvy; I’m a late bloomer. My mom used to tell me, “You’ll get boobs Aubrey. I’ve got them, you’ll get them when you’re older, we just develop later.” All of my friends got their period two years before I did so I used to run around with tampons and I had no idea what to do with them but I wanted to look cool. [Laughs]

So all of these blogs are trying to say I’ve had plastic surgery but it’s all makeup and camera angles and lighting or putting on more lashes or less lashes. It’s a makeup game, it’s all tricks. It has nothing to do with how I look.

AE: Or who you are.

AO: I don’t think anyone knows who I am. I’m still trying to figure it out, you know?

AE: Well, you and the rest of the world. I mean at this point, it’s kind of hard to believe anyone even gives a shit whose boobs are fake and whose are real. Who cares? It’s just sad. I think you being on the show will be really interesting to watch because it will be showing a side of you that most people haven’t seen. When you go to your Twitter page or Facebook page, you’ve got all of these sexy pictures up of yourself but now you have the opportunity to show your brains.

AO: Yeah, I’m really excited about that, too. I think it will be interesting to see who ends up standing out and being the people that make it to the end. I think people will be surprised at who ends up going – I don’t think it will be who anyone expects.

Admittedly, I’ve had a hard time even thinking about watching anything that would put The Donald on my TV screen, but it’s difficult to be so angry when a lot of money is being raised to benefit worthwhile organizations. I had a hard time not crying while watching the preview below.

You can catch the premiere episode this Sunday, February 19 from 9 p.m. EST/PST on NBC.

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