MAFS' Beck shares real reason why she quit Celebrity Apprentice
Beck Zemek has spilled some explosive tea about her time on Celebrity Apprentice, including the real reason why she left the show when she did.
The Married At First Sight bride told So Dramatic! that despite being ‘fired’ by Lord Alan Sugar in episode 11, she had actually organised her exit with the producers beforehand so she could return home to Perth before the Western Australian borders closed.
“We were coming towards Christmas with filming and I was 16 weeks into my pregnancy,” she explained. “My parents didn’t know, Ben’s parents didn’t know, my friends didn’t know, but producers knew and all these random celebrities I’d just met knew.”
Beck says that she “freaked out” when WA Premier Mark McGowan started tightening the border because of Omicron, so she began the application process to travel home.
“Channel Nine actually started trying to get my G2G pass sorted for me,” she detailed. “They literally got a letter from a doctor saying I need to go home because my family’s there and I’m pregnant. They even got a psych letter saying I mentally need to go home now.”
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After her application was eventually approved, the producers asked her to “go out with a bang”.
“So I turned to Bronte [Campbell] and I was like, ‘Bronte, I’m telling you now, I’m going home so don’t stress when we go back into that boardroom. But I’m going to give it to you’,” she recalled.
“As soon as I got fired I turned to Bronte and we were smiling at each other and I just gave her the biggest hug. I was like, ‘I’m so proud of you, that was good, thank you’.”
Beck also said that she believes she was fired in the very first episode because she had severe pregnancy symptoms and was yet to be double vaccinated, and it was always planned that she would return for the redemption episode.
“It turns out I would be coming back on the show at 12 weeks [pregnant], and that’s when you’re obviously clear to announce your pregnancy,” she adds. “So it did seem very well thought out.
“In my contract as well, I couldn’t actually possibly be fired in the first episode based on the episode payments I was guaranteed. Because I was guaranteed to be in more episodes.”
‘Secret alliance’
Elsewhere in her interview with host Megan Pustetto, Beck revealed that her ‘secret alliance’ with The Block’s Ronnie Caceres was concocted by the producers when they told the cast to break off into groups of two.
“They’d already pre-empted Ronnie and I to have this on-camera chat about what was going on,” she shared. “This is all pre-meditated stuff. It’s not as if me and Ronnie just made a pact.”
‘Rigged’
Beck also claimed that the producers pulled her aside while filming episode 7 and told her that they wanted Samantha Jade to be the next celebrity fired.
“Samantha put in a lot of effort [in the challenge], however, I had the producers in my ear and they were just like, ‘Look, we want Sam to go home’,” she said.
“They were like, ‘If you put yourself, Turia [Pitt] and Benji [Marshall] in the room, Benji’s going to go for you, Turia’s going to go for you and then you’ll probably go home. You haven’t even raised money for your charity yet and I know you don’t want to go home right now, I think you should put Samantha in that room’.”
Speaking about rumours that the show is ‘rigged’ for which celebrities make it to the end, Beck admitted that certain elements of the show are “fabricated in some way”.
“Not bagging me and Carla [from Bankstown], but if we got to the grand final we would probably raise $50,000 each maybe,” she laughed. “You have to have the big dogs in the finale.”
“I think if I opted not to go home, I reckon I could’ve gotten top three. But I wouldn’t have got to the grand final. And if I did, I would have been s**tting myself going, ‘Oh my god, what the f**k, I’m going to have to like, get an instant loan out of $100,000 just to set myself up’.”
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