After ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ firing, David Cassidy says, ‘Do I stab this guy in the back? That’s not me’

By John Katsilometes

Monday, March 7, 2011 | 8:33 p.m.

This is where we free-fall in time with David Cassidy.

The interview is the morning of Jan. 31. Six weeks prior, Cassidy finished his on-camera work for this season’s edition of Donald Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice,” which was to debut March 6, or seven weeks following the interview.

Oh, and Cassidy also is performing in Las Vegas, at Orleans Showroom, on May 7-8 -- two months after “Celebrity Apprentice” premiered.

It’s a calendar twister, all right -- Marty McFly had an easier time figuring out the here-and-now. During the half-hour phone conversation, Cassidy referred in past tense to a TV show that won’t actually begin airing for another seven weeks, for a column to be written after that debut.

It was not until this week that what he said five weeks ago matches what happens in the show. Or, happened.

I originally sought out Cassidy for a conversation about “Celebrity Apprentice” mostly because he does have a vivid history in Las Vegas. In 1997, he replaced Michael Crawford as star of the production show “EFX” at MGM Grand. Two years later, he co-starred with Sheena Easton in the Rio show “At the Copa.” Cassidy was impressive in that production, which he co-produced, showing off all of his entertainment acumen, including some ripping guitar work and his ample singing and dancing skills. He also kept from cracking up any time he was referred to by his character's name, "Johnny Flamingo."

But for all his onstage dexterity, the former teen heartthrob was not fully prepared for his turn on “Celebrity Apprentice,” a celebration of back-biting, backstabbing and abject lying that is, of course, terrific TV on NBC. The two-hour debut aired Sunday night, with a typically wide-ranging cast of characters.

Playing hardball for The Donald, his daughter Ivanka and son Donald Trump Jr. are: Meat Loaf, former Sugar Ray frontman Mark McGrath, rapper Lil Jon, ex-“The View” panelist Star Jones, “The Real Housewives of Atlanta’s” NeNe Leakes, country singer John Rich, 2010 Playboy Playmate of the Year Hope Dworaczyk, lippy ex-“Days of Our Lives” stalwart Lisa Rinna, Jackson sibling LaToya, big-league steroid whistle blower Jose Canseco, Oscar-winning actress Marlee Matlin (the show’s first deaf contestant), supermodel Niki Taylor, legendary songstress Dionne Warwick and the multiple personalities of Gary Busey. (Many cast members hit Surrender at Encore on Sunday night for the show's official premiere party.)

For Cassidy, it was a rockin’ one-off performance: Here’s how it turned out for the onetime Keith Partridge:

• When the cast was split into all-male, all-female teams for a pizza-making competition for charity, Cassidy’s first move was to walk into the cross-hairs of first-year “Survivor” champ Richard Hatch.

• Needing a favor from anyone in his vast list of contacts, Cassidy was still unable to lure any high-financed donor to give money to Backbone (as the team was called), who were baking pizza for charity. He did muster a $1,000 donation from his daughter, actress Katie Cassidy. But that sum did nothing but (apparently) annoy Hatch, who has turned exuding and creating annoyance on reality TV shows into an art form.

• Hatch actually pushed Cassidy, physically, placed his hands on him at least twice as the pizza-making discussion became particularly tense. Cassidy later told Hatch not to do that, at which Hatch claimed not to remember ever doing it. But he did it. It’s right there in the footage: He pushed Keith Partridge.

• During the post-competition session before the Trump Triumvirate, Canseco told the judges about Hatch pushing and otherwise attempting to bully Cassidy, who is a good bit smaller than Hatch (who is, of course, a good bit smaller than Canseco). Canseco verified Cassidy’s claim about the intimidation tactics Hatch tried to exert on just about everyone on Backbone (except for Canseco, largely because of the earlier parenthetical reference). Hatch thus engaged both Canseco and Cassidy in a two-against-one argument, during which he blithely claimed Canseco lacked intelligence and chided Cassidy for taking too many smoke breaks over the six-hour pizza contest.

Canseco took no breaks. He also raised no money. That's because nobody who played pro baseball with Jose wants anything to do with him after his explosive book “Juiced” blew the cover off steroid abuse in the sport. But as Trump noted, Canseco tells it like it is, baby. And when told by The Donald that he looked like he wanted to beat the crap out of Hatch, Canseco squinted and said, “That would be affirmative.”

Trump liked that. But he was less enamored of Cassidy, whom he viewed as wilting under the intense arguing, especially as Hatch made a reference to “little people,” and Cassidy snapped, “I am not a little person! I’m a lot bigger person than you are!” By then, Trump had turned the women’s team, A.S.A.P., loose from the boardroom (because Jones’ crew raised more money and won the competition) and brought in Canseco, Hatch and Cassidy for the inevitable termination. The women were dispatched to a waiting room with a monitor and watched the saga in astonishment, with Rinna gasping, “He just called David Cassidy a little person!”

Most of the men on Backbone had told Trump that Hatch should be fired, but The Donald followed his Donald instincts and instead fired Cassidy, whom he said lacked the required passion and conviction to win the competition.

Hatch, he's got conviction. He's also a worm. A worm with conviction.

Looking back, and also looking ahead, Cassidy agreed that he was not cut out to win this contest.

“I’m a really good team player,” he said. “That’s what it takes to work in the theater. That’s what it takes to work in a band with musicians and writers.”

Hatch, meanwhile, is happily at home in the conniving environment these competition shows present. He is the McGyver of connivers.

“The one thing I have never have done is be in a competition as a team player, and that’s where people who do what competitors do -- they look at the strongest team players and they want to win, so they try to eliminate,” Cassidy said. “That’s not my nature. I’m not a competitive guy with the team I’m working with, but that’s the game. So once you realize that it’s a contest, it’s a whole different mindset. Do I want to try to stab this guy in the back? That’s not me. I’m not that guy.”

Cassidy said he was lured to the show by series producers and thought, hell, it’s worth a shot.

“They called me and said Donald wanted me to do this. I’d met Donald a few times in the ’80s and he saw me in (the Broadway production) ‘Blood Brothers' in the ’90s,” Cassidy recalled. “I wouldn’t call him a friend, but I would say we knew each other. My brother Shaun, at one point, had tried to work and develop a television show with him maybe 10 years ago. But the executive producers really wanted me to do (“Celebrity Apprentice”), even though I’d never done any reality TV, and I looked at it as a) an opportunity to reach a lot of people and b) to try to raise a lot of money for a charity.”

He didn’t expect the heavy demands on his time, though.

“The schedule is like, all day, all night, Mary Ann,” he said, chuckling. “We had long days of preparation for media. I’ve never done so many photo shoots, I’ve never done more promotion, pre-promotion before you start doing the show itself. … It’s everything you can possibly imagine before you actually go to work. By that time -- Jesus, everybody was talking about it, like, ‘How many times a day do you want us to shoot, to be interviewed, to be shooting, to do photos, to do intros, to do film stuff, on-location stuff?’ And it was during the winter in New York, so it was an interesting experience.”

Cassidy didn’t seem fazed by the early dismissal. He’s a pretty busy guy, touring the country with his greatest-hits show that will stop at Orleans in May. The show must go on, even if this particular show plays to our guiltiest pleasures.

“I’m sure the show is going to be very successful,” he said. “Once they began doing ‘Celebrity Apprentice,’ apparently the audience wasn’t that keen on the ordinary apprentice. That is probably the best indictment with our fascination with celebrity in our culture, which drives me crazy.”

Not knowing the details of his pink-slippage, I asked Cassidy who on the cast most impressed him.

“The one person I connected to -- if you knew me, you would understand why. But it was a guy, and he and I are diametrically, in terms of peoples’ perception, totally different,” he said. “We’re completely different physically. Our careers are totally different, but we bonded really well, and we worked together just brilliantly and became friends.

“I have so much respect for this individual, and you’ll see it on the first episode.”

We did. I guess now it’s “Go Jose!” rooting for the deposed home run king. Makes sense to me. On “Celebrity Apprentice,” this is an entirely natural turn of events.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow Kats With the Dish at twitter.com/KatsWithTheDish.