“It got to the point of ‘separate these guys’.
The Apprentice 2026 winner Karishma Vijay revealed there were furious bust-ups behind the scenes that had producers step in to stop it turning physical.
During filming, the candidates live together.
Karishma described the living situation as an environment defined by clashing personalities.
She said: “It’s very weird living with strangers.
“I’m messy and some people are OCD clean freaks and it was like, ‘Oh Karishma, I found a molecule of your hair on the floor’.
“I beefed with a lot of people. If I felt someone overstepped the mark, I let it be known.”
According to Karishma, tensions frequently escalated to the point where intervention became necessary from production.
She added: “It got to the point of ‘separate these guys’.
“Production never leaves. There was a home team but you can’t have 20 people in a house together and expect them to love each other.
“I was involved here and there. I was never in anyone else’s drama, though, if someone wants to have drama with me, I’ll give it.”
Karishma also revealed that she lost her cool during the infamous interviews stage, forcing cameras to stop rolling.
She continued: “I believe much of it, 90 per cent of it was cut, and it would have resulted in major Ofcom complaints because it led to tears.
“After all of my interviews, I lost all composure, and I’m a very calm and collected person. The feedback I get a lot of the time is, ‘She’s so calm, things go wrong, and she’s so calm’.
“For the first time, I let it go. Cameras had to be cut because of my choice of language.
“I would not talk back to anybody, after. I tried to talk back. If I was not allowed to speak my truth, then the interview is very much over.
“If someone is older than me, more successful, someone’s who’s lived days I haven’t, so I’m respectful. But once I leave that room, it’s just me and my thoughts.”
Early on, crew members questioned whether Karishma wanted to continue in the process.
On The Shizzio Show podcast, she said:
“First night in Hong Kong, no one is intimidated by me, no one sees me as competition.”
“There was a lot of trying to big themselves up. I’ve come from nothing, so I don’t compete with these people and production saw I was not OK and asked if I wanted to go home.
“It would have been a very interesting boardroom if they’d had a candidate immediately say. ‘I don’t think this is for me’.
“I saw it like, ‘I can’t trust production, they don’t really care about my welfare, they care for the show’. But I can speak to the cameras and do business.
“I don’t need best friends, this isn’t school and I don’t need to be popular here.”
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