Trump was the face of the reality TV show from 2004-2015

Producers of Donald Trump’s reality TV show The Apprentice have opened up about working with the would-be president and everything they saw, felt and smelled in the process.

Cast your mind back to 2004. JLo and Ben Affleck had just broken up for the first time, Usher was topping the charts, and Donald Trump had never been in charge of a country.

Instead, the businessman had been charge of the Trump Organization, the real estate business focusing on building and renovating big buildings like skyscrapers and hotels, and he was just about to become the face of The Apprentice.

Trump was working in real estate before appearing on the show (Bill Tompkins/Getty Images)

Producers on the show included Alan Blum and Bill Pruitt, and 20 years on they’ve now looked back on their experience in interviews, which inform The New York Times book Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success.

It was late in the summer of 2003 when the producers arrived at Trump Tower to check out the set of the series, in which contestants had to show off their business skills in the hope of impressing Trump and winning a year-long apprenticeship at the Trump Organization.

The producers were hoping to find indicators of wealth and power that would highlight Trump’s status over the wannabe business men and women, but they remembered instead being shocked by the sight that met them on the 26th floor.

Apprentice contestants hoped to work at the Trump Organization (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

The Times reported that the first thing the team noticed was ‘the stench’, describing it as a ‘musty carpet odor that followed them like an invisible cloud’.

They cast their eyes on chips in the desks and ‘out of date’ decor, which made the building appear as if it hadn’t been updated since it was first opened.

Pruitt recalled: “When you go into the office and you’re hearing ‘billionaire,’ even ‘recovering billionaire,’ you don’t expect to see chipped furniture, you don’t expect to smell carpet that needs to be refreshed in the worst, worst way.”

The atmosphere was also lacking; where the producers had hoped for a buzz of energy, they were met by less than 50 employees.

The Apprentice ended up being a hit with viewers (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Trump’s desk allegedly featured nothing but news articles about himself, prompting another producer, Jonathon Braun, to recall how their job was ‘to make him look legitimate’.

“To make him look like there was something behind it, even though we pretty much all knew that there wasn’t — but that was our job,” Braun added.

“We weren’t making a documentary,” he continued. “Richard Attenborough was not narrating this. This was an entertainment prime-​time network show.”

To help sell the vision to fans, Burnett rented a vacant space in Trump Tower, which he allegedly paid $440,000 a year for, and hired a set designer to create a boardroom suitable for the star of a show about business.

Their work ultimately paid off, and The Apprentice went on to become a hit with its very first series.