Claudia Jordan – The Full Deal

From Deal or No Deal to Celebrity Apprentice to her two shows on Sirius satellite radio, Claudia Jordan has been ascending the ladder of success at a rapid rate. On August 23rd Jordan will be co-hosting the Miss Universe pageant on NBC, possibly inadvertently making a contestant or two slightly self-conscious about their looks, and she just had a television show of her own green lit by a major cable television network. With all of this going on in her life I caught up Jordan to get the details on her upcoming projects, what went on behind the scenes at Celebrity Apprentice, and what a radio show about love triangles taught her about her audience.

Adam Bernard: I heard you just had a show green-lit. Congrats! What’s it gonna be about?
Claudia Jordan: Thank you. Yes, we just pitched a show to VH1, it’s like a docu-soap, part reality, part scripted, it’s gonna be like a black female Entourage, and they bought it on the spot. Kim Coles, Melyssa Ford and Elise Neal are on it with me and right now it’s called Single, Sexy and Starving, not starving for food, but maybe one of us is starved for love, maybe one of us is starved for more career things. That’s the working title right now.

Adam Bernard: Going back a bit in your history, you went from Deal or No Deal w/ Howie Mandel to Celebrity Apprentice w/ Donald Trump. Tell me, do you have something against people with good hair?
Claudia Jordan: {laughs} And there’s also Bob Barker, so maybe subconsciously there’s something going on there.

Adam Bernard: Why did you feel you’d be a good fit for Celebrity Apprentice?
Claudia Jordan: I was always lecturing the other girls on Deal or No Deal about how you gotta buy your own stuff, you gotta get in the real estate game, you gotta take all this money and not buy bags and stupid nonsense, but put it in real estate or invest it.

Adam Bernard: You were working and interacting with a bunch of colorful personalities on Celebrity Apprentice. Which competitor most surprised you, either in their demeanor or their work ethic?
Claudia Jordan: I’ll say Brande Roderick. She’s a playmate and a beautiful blonde girl and people would be quick to assume she’s just a bimbo, but she’s certainly not. She was smart, she was resourceful, she was a hard worker, she was humble, she didn’t have an ego, she was great.

Adam Bernard: What was it like working with the legendary Joan Rivers?
Claudia Jordan: You know, as a woman who has kind of an edgy sense of humor myself, I was looking forward to meeting her. She’s someone who I really admired. I like her comedy, I like that she says what she wants to. As soon as I said something that wasn’t complimentary about her daughter, though, she became like a tyrant. She was on Twitter calling me a stupid bitch and I just thought wow, Joan, you gotta separate the TV show from real life. I was disappointed that to be so old she was so immature. I still have respect for her, but I tried to take a picture of her at the finale and congratulate her and she put her hand up and blocked her face. It was really childish.

Adam Bernard: Were there any backstage hijinks going on during the filming of the show?
Claudia Jordan: No, but a little racist kind of thing happened. I went to dinner with two of the contestants and we were trying to butter up these rich people to get potential donations from them, it was this older white dude, me and Brande and we were like oh, we’re so tired, we’ve been working like slaves, and he was like slaves, yea, let’s make a toast to Obama! He made other inappropriate comments, too. He toasted Abe Lincoln for freeing the slaves cuz he thought I was a pretty black girl. I have a good sense of humor about stuff like that and I don’t take everything so seriously, but that's kind of rude.

Adam Bernard: Yeah, I should say. Moving from the serious to the humorous, can you give me a funny story from your time on the show?
Claudia Jordan: One time we were getting ready and everybody was running late. We were getting ready to leave and Dice Clay came into the hair and makeup room with a robe on, like fresh out of the shower, and I think I saw a little skin. {laughs}

Adam Bernard: Oh no, an accidental peek at the Diceman’s dice! Switching subjects as fast as possible, in addition to your TV work you are also a co-host on The Foxxhole, which is Jamie Foxx’s Sirius radio show. Tell me, has he ever come in late and blamed it on the a-a-a-a-alcohol?
Claudia Jordan: {laughs} He’s come in late, he doesn’t blame it on the alcohol, but he has this smirk on his face and you never really know what that means, it could mean anything. Jamie’s off the hook. I’ve been friends with him for over ten years and his jackets and his shirts may be a little bit tighter now, but he’s like the same person he was ten years ago. He has the same friends he’s had for ten, fifteen years.

Adam Bernard: What happens on The Foxxhole?
Claudia Jordan: We try to find as many current events that we can draw some jokes out of. They gave me a spin-off show on Monday nights, The Claudia Jordan Show, which has me and four of my girls who suck at relationships. We try to get a male guest in there to tell us what we’re doing wrong. We cover a bunch of different topics. We just had a show called "Dangerously in Love - When Love Triangles go Bad," where we talked about the Steve McNair murder.

Adam Bernard: I don’t think love triangles ever go well.
Claudia Jordan: They really don’t. I didn’t realize how common it was for people to get murdered because of it. Maybe our demographic is just off the chain, but we had several callers say the same thing happened to them. It was more than one person who called in and said this. It’s apparently more common than we thought.

Adam Bernard: From what I hear you’re also the pretty girl who’s into sports.
Claudia Jordan: I love sports. I was All-American in track and I love football. I’m a Patriots fan all the way and not a new fair-weather fan, I’ve been a Patriots fan for a long time.

Adam Bernard: Have you ever dated an athlete?
Claudia Jordan: Yes, I dated Dwight Freeney of the Colts for like a year. The game he invited me to, all his family was coming, it was a home game in Indianapolis and it was the Colts versus the Patriots. I was sitting next to his mom and they put a D. Free sticker on my face, bracelets, all this Colts stuff and then I walked around and I would see Patriots fans and they would look at me and I would look at them with a sad look like I’m sorry, I’m with his mom. I felt like such a traitor. But the Patriots won the game and I rejoiced inside, quietly to myself.

Adam Bernard: Finally, what would you say is the most embarrassing guilty pleasure you have in life?
Claudia Jordan: I’m a degenerate gambler.

Adam Bernard: Wait, the woman who tells other women not to buy bags and to spend their money on real estate is also putting her mortgages down on the craps table?
Claudia Jordan: Pretty much. I’m sensible in all areas of life except when it comes to gambling. I lose all my financial sense. I’m so savvy when it comes to investing money and all that, but when it comes to gambling it all goes out the window.

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Twitter: twitter.com/claudiajordan