The Apprentice 2026 winner Karishma Vijay reveals unseen bust-ups between candidates
The Apprentice 2026 winner Karishma Vijay has revealed there were furious clashes between the candidates in the house they all shared.
The Apprentice 2026 winner Karishma Vijay said there were furious bust-ups between the candidates behind the scenes.
Producers were forced to step in to stop the clashes before things got physical in the house, which was shared by 20 aspiring entrepreneurs, who had heated exchanges in the boardroom and on tasks as they fought for BBC show boss Lord Alan Sugar's £250,000 business investment.
Karishma, 29, who secured the 79-year-old business mogul's cash injection for her skincare-infused beauty brand, Kishkin – the Skincare Miracle, spilled all on the latest episode of The Shizzio Show podcast.
She said: "It's very weird [living with strangers] because everyone's a little bit different, right?
"I'm a little bit messy, and some people are like OCD clean freaks, and it was like, 'Oh, Karishma, I found a molecule of your hair on the floor and in my bed.'
Asked if there's "beef", Karishma admitted: "Yeah. I beefed with a lot of people. If I felt someone overstepped the mark, I let it be known.”
Confirming there were big arguments in the house, Karishma revealed: "It got to the point of 'separate these guys.'
"Production never leaves. There was a home team, but you cannot put 20 people in one home and expect that everyone must love each other. It doesn't work that way."
She added: "I was involved here and there. I was never in anyone else’s drama, though, but if someone wants to have drama with me - I’ll give it."
Karishma forced cameras to stop rolling as she lost her cool in the brutal interviews stage - the penultimate task of The Apprentice, in which Lord Sugar's trusted advisers scrutinise the final five's business plans.
She said: "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."
Tension amongst the candidates began from task one, and the crew asked if Karishma wanted to leave.
She said: "First night in Hong Kong, nobody is intimidated by me, nobody sees me as competition. They're all trying to big themselves up. I’ve come from nothing, so I don’t compete with these people. And immediately in Hong Kong, production saw that I was not OK and asked if I wanted to go home.
"It would have been a very interesting boardroom to have a candidate immediately say, 'I don’t think this is for me.'
"I saw it like, 'I can’t trust production, they work for the BBC, they don't work for me. They might be welfare, they don't care for my actual welfare, they care for the show, and the views, and how many people are watching it.'
"I can speak to the cameras, and do I business. I don’t need best friends - this isn’t school. I don’t need to be the cool kid, I don't need to be popular here, I don't need to make friends here.
"I need to perform. Let it be business, turn the cameras on, I'm ready."
