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March 28th, 2024

Insight

No one has seen the drama series based on Donald Trump's life . . . until now

Marc Fisher

By Marc Fisher

Published Feb. 12, 2016

Donald Trump's agent told him not to do a TV show about business. "The Apprentice," the agent said, would never work.


Trump, running on instinct, as ever, rejected his agent's advice. "Appentice" was an instant hit and the agent, of course, was fired.


The runaway success of "Apprentice," starting in 2002, whet Trump's appetite for television - and for politics, though that would wait a few years. In the meantime, he let it be known that he wanted to develop a weekly drama series based on his own life.


The show, titled "The Tower," was to feature the adventures of a New York City developer who makes big deals, loves to win, and has set out to construct the tallest building in the world.

Producers hired a Hollywood TV writer, Gay Walch, to create a pilot script for "The Tower." Walch borrowed scenes from Trump's books to help build the main character. Network executives said the script, like the overwhelming majority of pilots, never made it to TV because it wasn't a compelling story.


The Washington Post has obtained a scene from that pilot script, read here by actors. The Trump-like developer is named John Barron, a name that Trump asked Walch to use for the main character. (Two years after "The Tower" was scrapped, Trump and his third wife, Melania, named their son Barron.)

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