Quitters Never Win? Not So, Says The Apprentice's Michelle

Nearly two years after the Donald accepted the first-ever resignation from NBC's The Apprentice (Sundays at 9 pm/ET), Jaime Pressly-look-alike Michelle Sorro dropped her own Q-bomb, dropping out of the contest before she almost undoubtedly would have been canned for steering a real car wreck of a Hollywood bus tour. Michelle, though, considers herself a winner for bidding the boardroom goodbye. In this Q&A, she explains why. (She also shares a hint or two about the NBC-promo'd on-cast romance.... )

TVGuide.com: NBC promised us a "boardroom bombshell," and damned if you didn't come through with one.
Michelle Sorro: I delivered, didn't I!

TVGuide.com: I've been covering this show for six seasons now, and thought for sure it'd be a bunch of puffery. But it was pretty good entertainment there.
Michelle: It was.... At the end of the day, it's just a TV show — and you, more than most people, know about what goes on behind the scenes — so I was just like, "Whatever." It's not like I was trying to escape the obvious, it was just one less day to have to endure it.

TVGuide.com: At what point did you first consider resigning?
Michelle: Pretty much the moment [during the season premiere] we were building the stupid tent. I was like, "Hmm, this is insane." When it really hit home was when I was on the top of the double-decker tour bus failing miserably. It dawned on me, "I don't have to do this. It's just too much, and it's not worth it." Also, the whole team wasn't represented correctly. It's not that they all hated me. There were two people who had big negative opinions, but there were several team members I had great relationships with, and still do.

TVGuide.com: Trump suggested that one day you will regret your decision. Do you yet?
Michelle: [Scoffs] Not at all. Please. Regret what, quitting a reality-TV show that is nothing like a job interview that I have ever experienced? No, I never will regret it. In fact, it has given me amazing insight and inspiration to quit several other things in my life that were also no longer serving me.

TVGuide.com: Sounds like you broke up with a boyfriend....
Michelle: I actually got a boyfriend, because I quit bad dating habits! My mother was like, "You don't date. You meet." I was like the chronic dater, dating a lot of different people for a couple of years, and never choosing one person. So I quit bad dating habits, I quit a real-estate partnership where I was making a quarter-million dollars a year — in order to go for my dream — and I quit a really bad smoking habit. So I don't regret quitting the show, and I'm glad I went on the show.

TVGuide.com: I have to ask, was your hair as ratty as it was looking there at the end?
Michelle: [Chuckles] Yeah. It's called "two days with no sleep at all." You tell me what your hair would look like after not sleeping for 48 hours!

TVGuide.com: When you resigned, did you consider that Trump might go on to fire someone else for losing the task, someone undeserving? Would you have been able to live with that?
Michelle: The thought popped into my head that it was a possibility, but it never occurred to me that he would. Even when James brought it up and he was all terrified and paranoid, my response was just as I said on camera: "Don't even say that, it's not going to happen." And 10 minutes later [Trump's office] called to assure them that it wasn't.

TVGuide.com: At the point you left, did your team suspect that the Kinetic players were eavesdropping on the camp through the hedges?
Michelle: No. We were all so self-absorbed in that particular moment that we just did not even realize that they were listening. In fact, some of the people from Kinetic are now my very good friends — we shot this in June and July — and some of them wrote to me to say, "Holy s--t! This is amazing!"

TVGuide.com: Next week's promos tease the start of an Apprentice romance. Did you get wind of it while you were there?
Michelle: I did know of a budding romance, and that is another example of... the whole culture of reality TV is the building of alliances behind the scenes, which unfortunately I was very naive to. But when two people become like one person with one thought and one agenda, because they are now a budding romance, and if they are on your team and then your team, let's just say, gets divided into two, you basically have no chance. [Laughs] So yeah, I knew. It became very evident when we were in that last task.

TVGuide.com: Now, what's the deal, there was no town car to drive you away, because you quit?
Michelle: [Laughs] Of course I had a nice car, but they just hid it around the corner. They did not make me walk home.

TVGuide.com: Previous castoffs Martin and Carey shared with me their respective missions, to somehow get reinstated on the show, and to prove that a skimpy men's swimsuit can be a big seller. What is your mission?
Michelle: Well, despite the fact that I was horrific and dismal as a tour-bus project manager, I am a very gifted orator, if you will, and my mission is to be a full-time television correspondent doing work that stimulates personal and professional growth for myself and others!

Hey, reality-TV fans! Simon Cowell sounds off on Rosie O'Donnell's criticism of American Idol in the Jan. 29 issue of TV Guide. Also, get the latest scoop on your favorite shows from TV Guide Channel's Reality Chat. Click here for listings.

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