Balancing a radio show and filming a reality TV series is no easy feat. And no one understands that more than Nova’s Michael ‘Wippa’ Wipfli, who had to find a way to make it all work for the chance to raise money for his chosen charity.
WATCH BELOW: The Veronicas clash on Celebrity Apprentice
With long hours and even longer days spent filming for Celebrity Apprentice Australia, Wippa exclusively tells WHO that tensions were bound to rise, and, with so many hours of footage to work with, not everything can make the cut.
“With so much time spent filming and cameras around, you never know what’s going to make the edit,” he says. “So it’s interesting to watch to see how they do it because it’s a clever format.”
But one thing he knew for sure would be included, was what went down with The Veronicas, where they confronted the opposing team about an electrician assisting them during a challenge.
“I knew they’d put The Veronicas in there cracking the poos about the electrician, and that was a hard juggle when it happened,” Wippa says.
In the episode, the twin sisters clashed with a number of their co-stars, and after it aired, they took to social media to condemn the show for editing them to appear “strong-arming” the other team members.
But, Wippa adds that with everyone hoping to raise money for charities close to their hearts, it was only natural for emotions to be at an all time high.
“These moments are heated and they’re passionate – we’re representing charities so it makes sense that things are going to come with emotion,” he says.
More often than not, the boardroom is where it gets really intense, with each time they step foot inside, they need to be ready to fight for a chance to stay.
And, it’s up to the celebs to keep everything in perspective and to understand where it’s coming from.
“If there’s any argy bargy that takes place in the boardroom – and there’s a moment coming up where Ross [Noble] and I have a bit of argy bargy – we all know where it’s coming from,” Wippa explains.
“We all know it’s coming from a good place, so I was never going to go in there and attack somebody but I was most definitely going to stake my claim and defend myself.”
As for tactics and strategy, Wippa says the only thing he went in with was to just throw himself into every task with a 100%, so that he could back himself with confidence that he’d given it everything.
“That’s all I really had, there was certainly no structure behind drawing alliances with anybody. It was simply just getting in there and getting your hands dirty when you could,” he says.
Although, the same could not be said for his fellow co-stars, with David Genat in particular raising red flags with his tricks and sneaky tactics.
“David is a lovely bloke but of course on the show you can see there’s too much Survivor tactics coming in to the wrong show,” Wippa says.
“I think he’s confused with the show that he’s on there a bit.”
On the other hand, Wippa reveals that it’s not all game plans and strategy, where he actually found himself forming good friendships during the show, connecting in particular with Martha Kalifatidis.
“We kind of bonded in terms of being on the same line of thought for a lot of things,” he says.
“We sort of understood each other, in knowing what the other one was thinking and if something wasn’t right, we could go to each other and go ‘hey, I think I can smell a stinker here’.”
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