Omarosa Breaks Silence on the 'House of Villains' Tambourine Incident

Omarosa Interview

For Omarosa Manigault-Newman, House of Villains has been a treacherous road full of highs and lows. The legendary baddie from The Apprentice, who waylaid her five minutes of fame into a White House career, a bestselling book and 20 years on reality TV, arrived to the house with a massive target on her back. Over the following weeks, that target got no smaller as she was declared Supervillain of the Week two out of the first three weeks.

However, during Week Three, when fellow villain and rival Tanisha Thomas brought a choir and tambourine into the house, things began to sour. Omarosa claims that Tanisha hit her on the back of the hand with a tambourine and in the aftermath, demanded a restraining order, took a trip to the ER and sat out of the Week Five Battle Royale Challenge due to her doctor's note.

The show has from the start portrayed this as a fictitious attack, showing footage of the tambourine missing Omarosa's hand, collecting accounts from the other villains, who claim the injured hand is a strategic move, and reinforcing that the "medic" who Omarosa often sites is not a real doctor. Last week in his exit interview, Bobby Lytes also stated he did "not think she was injured at all."

In this week's episode, Omarosa opts to sit out of the Battle Royale Challenge and is consequently put on the Hit List, where Tanisha, along with Shake Chatterjee, vote to send her home. While the show's producers have edited the whole tambourine incident as a farce, Omarosa certainly claims otherwise. In an interview with Parade, Omarosa shares her version of the tambourine story, claims that the win was "stolen" from her and says that "evil editing" was introduced by producers. Oh, and she was signing onto her law school classes via Zoom while filming! Here's our interview with Omarosa: 

Matthew Huff: Omarosa, I've been looking forward to chatting with you, although I'm upset that it's so early. I was hoping that you would last longer. 

Omarosa Manigault-Newman: I appreciate that. I am actually very surprised considering that I was winning the competition until it was stolen from me, but whatever.

Let's talk about. You won two Battle Royale challenges. Everybody else was throwing competitions, trying not to get blood on their hands. What was your sort of overall strategy?

I wanted to use my experience in these types of competitive reality shows to my advantage and so much of that was just strategic gameplay, meaning aligning myself with the alliances that I had, playing hard, winning when I needed to, not winning comps when I didn't. You know, I clearly didn't want to win when they were doing the handcuffing briefcase thing. I didn't want to have three in a row because that would have just been too dominant. I thought I set myself up pretty well to win the show, and I was on track to do so until it just stopped.

What kept you from winning the show? Is there anything you would have done differently or you wish you could go back and change? 

Well, you know, unfortunately, I was exposed to workplace violence, and I know that there are millions of people who get exposed to this. I never expected that I would be working in an environment where physical violence, threats, harassment, intimidation would happen to me. I can't even believe that they aired it. [Tanisha Thomas] swinging and trying to attack me, ultimately harming me to the point where I had to get medical care. But that's what you watched. I mean they even slow-mo'd her hitting me. The one version they show, I guess, shows just her coming within inches of my face or my arm.

I want to say this very clearly, and I hope that you'll share this in your piece, you should not be subjected to any type of workplace violence. No matter where you work, it should not be volatile. And if you are, then you need to remove yourself from that. I unfortunately was subjected to that and then mocked because of it. Like I said, I was on track to win this thing. And you can see a clear turn of events where I go from being very dominant to then I just physically couldn't compete. I look weak and I was made fun of. And then the producers come in with their, what we call in the business, evil editing, you know, to kind of, I guess, protect themselves or mitigate what kind of environment they set up. But yeah, I literally thought I was going to win and I was poised to win. And I'm devastated that I did not. But as they say in Hollywood, it's not the crime, it's the coverup.

Related: Omarosa Demands Restraining Order on House of Villains

Early on, you and Jonny Fairplay were working together in OG Villains Alliance. As the show went on, that became less of a storyline. What happened between the two of you?

I don't know that anything happened. It was when Bobby [Lytes] left. He had like a work conflict or something. So he had to leave. That's why he put himself up, not because of this whole thing where he wanted to go head to head with bananas or whatever. He had another conflict. And so that threw off our alliance. We lost our number, and so once we lost that number, I think Fairplay made the right decision. He realized that our side no longer had the advantage, and he went where the numbers were. And I don't bemoan him that. I mean, he's Jonny Fairplay. Like you can't take anything he says to be fact or factual, but for as long as it needed to work, it did at least work to get us where we needed to be.

You also formed a friendship and an alliance with Anfisa in the house. What is that relationship like? Are you guys still friends? Do you keep in touch with the cast? 

Yeah, definitely. I stay in touch with Jax, Bobby Lytes, and of course, Anfisa. She's my roommate for life. Jax and Anfisa, I'm very fortunate to be close to my roommates. They're really, really cool and just really, really fun. And I'm happy to see Jax thriving with his new businesses and his new shows. Happy to see my roommate Anfisa thriving in her fitness career as a model and in her bodybuilding. So, you know, I lucked out. I got great roommates. That doesn't always happen.

So what made you want to come on the show in the first place. What were you hoping to get out of it?

Well it's my 20th anniversary, The Apprentice taped in '03 and aired in '04. So I was hoping that this would be one of those milestones, one of those watershed moments in my career. But, you know, I'm just devastated with how it ended up. Very devastated at what I was subjected to. And I'm really, really sad about it because I think if you follow my career, you know, I'm not a quitter. I don't give up. I don't take the easy way out. And just the way the story was told, as if I just quit and took the easy way out, you know that's contrary to anything you've seen from me in 20 years on reality shows.

So I hope that you'll read between the lines that there's something more going on behind the scenes than what has been shown. And I think that in time it'll be revealed. Thank God I'm advocating for myself and speaking up for myself. The truth will come out. But I'm absolutely devastated because this was meant to be, you know, the competition that I won and marked two decades in the business. But instead, it was stolen from me.

Related: Bobby Lytes Sheds Light on Omarosa's Mysterious Tambourine Injury

You've already done so much in these two decades. What's next on the horizon? 

Well, currently, and while I was on the show, I'm in law school. So I was balancing production and law school. I don't know if during the show you saw, I sometimes had my computer out, I had my laptop. That was a part of my contract because I was actually joining my law classes by Zoom and trying to stay up on my reading. It is so arduous. I'm going to be a very successful entertainment lawyer once I finish law school. But I've been producing a lot. I just completed my third documentary, a project I've been doing for two years following Deion Sanders from his coaching career at Jackson State to where he is now. And so I'm very proud of that project. It's already been accepted into seven film festivals. I expect it to be accepted into many more, and hopefully we'll win big awards with my producer debut and directorial debut. Tiger Run is the name of the project. Please keep an eye out on it. I've also been just quietly producing projects for PBS, and I have about 150 episodes that I've produced so far. So definitely producing and directing are the next big steps that I'm taking in my entertainment career. It is the evolution of Omarosa.