There were plenty of clowns but no happy ending for the 22-year-old Utah woman vying to be Donald Trump's latest "Apprentice" — Audrey Evans heard the dreaded words, "You're fired," on Thursday night's edition of the NBC reality series.
Not that she has any regrets.
"I would do it again in a heartbeat," Evans told the Deseret Morning News on Thursday night after the show aired.
The current edition of "The Apprentice" matches a team of college graduates ("book smarts") against a team of high-school grads ("street smarts") that includes Evans. This week's task was to put together a miniature golf course, and Evans — who talked her way into being her team's project manager for the task — dressed the team up as clowns in an effort to entice children to play.
But her team's profits were only about 60 percent of their opponents', which sent Evans and Co. to the dreaded Trump boardroom. By the time that was over, all five of her teammates were pushing for Evans to be fired, and Trump ultimately agreed.
"Audrey, you're constantly blaming everybody on your team," the mogul said. "You never take any responsibility yourself. You were the team leader, and nobody from your team respected you. Not even your best friend."
She might have done things differently — she said that, with 20-20 hindsight, she wouldn't have pushed herself forward as project manager and would have tried to patch things up more with her teammates. But she's not worried about it.
"I'm doing great," Evans said, sounding genuinely upbeat after her firing aired. She admitted to "paranoia over the past couple of months because you just sit and dwell (on how you'll be prepared). And it's out of your control."
She was genuinely pleased with how the episode turned out, however. She thought the men on her team came off looking badly.
"I was at NBC today and I was, like, 'Wow, this is great. This is the best episode ever!' And they're looking at me saying, 'You're the happiest person to have been fired.' And I'm, like 'Hell, yeah!' "
(She was, indisputably, the most-bleeped contestant on the three seasons of "The Apprentice.")
"Salt Lake is a great place to live. . . . But not everybody in Utah is the same cookie-cutter person," she said.
Things started going south for Evans last week when her interpersonal relationships with her teammates took a serious turn for the worse. Evans felt she was being patronized by some of her older teammates; those teammates felt she was emotional and immature.
She did indeed become emotional in Thursday's episode, breaking into tears as she described losing her home and having to live in a car when her parents were convicted of fraud and sent to prison when she was 17.
"I felt that they needed to realize that Daddy didn't give me anything and Mommy didn't take care of me. . . . I did it myself," she said.
Sharing in Evans' disappointment was her boss, Gary Huntsman of Huntsman & Associates real estate.
"It's been really fun watching her every week. . . . She's talented, she's smart, she stands up for what she believes," Huntsman said. "She's been working with me, putting in 18-hour days, so she's not afraid to work."
"We don't know how long we're going to keep her. She's had all kinds of job offers."
For now, she's working hard with Huntsman; she's organizing tours (go to audreyevans.net for more information); and she's sorting though endorsement offers.
And, as emotional as the experience was, Evans misses "The Apprentice."
"When you're there, the intensity is so high," she said. "Every three days somebody's getting fired and it's like, 'I hate you and you hate me.' It's so insane. And then you come home to your normal life and you're like — OK, I need drama and excitement.
"There isn't a college in this country that would even give me remotely the level of education that I have just learned by doing it. It's trial by fire. This is it."
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com