‘Apprentice’ producers recall the particular set ‘stench’ they couldn’t shake off

The potential set for “The Apprentice” didn’t pass the smell test.

Here’s how producers of Donald Trump’s business reality show described the smell they encountered when they first visited the 26th floor of Trump Tower during pre-production for the show in 2003.

“The first thing they noticed was the stench, the musty odor that followed them like an invisible cloud,” New York Times reporters Russ Buettner and Susan Craig write in their new book “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success.” The Times published an adapted excerpt Saturday.

According to a Times reporter, “there were numerous blemishes in the finish of the wooden desks and cupboards,” and “the decor was so old it looked like a time capsule from when the building first opened in the early days of Donald J. Trump’s rise to fame.”

“When you walk into an office and hear the words ‘billionaire,’ or even ‘recovering billionaire,’ you don’t expect to see broken furniture, you don’t expect to smell carpet that needs to be redone in the worst, worst way possible,” said Bill Pruitt, one of the producers. “The whole thing was just ridiculous to all of us,” fellow producer Alan Blum said, according to the Times article.

The show’s creator, Mark Burnett, paid Trump (who former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois) described as “armpit, ketchup, makeup, and butt-smelling”) nearly $500,000 a year to live in a four-story space that he converted into a fake conference room and apartments for contestants.

“Our job was to make him seem real and like there was something behind him,” said Jonathan Brown, another producer. “We all knew there wasn’t.”

“But that was our job,” he added.

Read the full excerpt here.