COVER STORY
Kevin Harris, Cosmic Edibles CEO, Launches Cannabis Company with Money From Trump's The Apprentice Patrick Ian Moore
Kevin Harris launched his California edible company, Cosmic Edibles, with money he earned from being CoExecutive Producer of Donald Trump’s hit television show The Apprentice.
Edibles Magazine™ Issue 62
After six seasons, Kevin’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and he wanted to not only have the time to care for her, but also to give her clean medicine that he could both trust, and that he knew would help her cope during her recovery. He also conquered his own personal battle with melanoma. Edibles Magazine sat down with Kevin recently at the Cosmic Edibles kitchen in Los Angeles for this infused interview.
12
KH: Yeah. Yeah. It got to a point where, after about halfway through the first season, we determined that just one single person needed to produce him. Because he would use crew members to get what he wanted, when it was different than something we needed or wanted. So I would just 100% exclusively manage him, almost entirely, from picking him up at his apartment, to going to set, to going over what he was going to talk about during that scene that we needed, who did what on the challenges, what the status was, where we were. I shadowed him almost the entire time. EM: How many years did that go on?
Edibles Magazine: You have a very interesting story and background we want to share with everyone. First off, you were heavily involved with the popular TV show The Apprentice. Can you tell us the story of how you came to be involved with The Apprentice.
KH: I did 6 seasons, so that’s 3 years pushing 4. Then I backed off from it at that point. My contract was up with Burnett's production company. But I did the first 6 seasons in the field.
Kevin Harris: Well, I was in the television business already. I started in the film business and production and somewhere along the line in my career I met Mark Burnett, who was doing Survivor at the time. I started doing a show called Eco Challenge with him, great show. Then at some point after doing two of those shows, Mark said, “Hey, I’m putting together a ‘Survivor in the City,’ show with Donald Trump. Do you want to come out to New York and put it together?
KH: I first met Donald in 1999, and then we shot in 2000. I think it aired in 2001 or 2002, somewhere in that range is when we launched. That's when it just blew up. The first season, still… I think our finale had 40 something million viewers, which is astronomical for television. 10 million viewers is a lot right now, so 40 million is crazy.
I said, “Okay.” So I went out to New York and met Donald and helped formulate the show. We basically figured out what the show was, built the whole thing, with Donald, came up with the challenges. And then launched it. Initially, we did kind of structure it like ‘Survivor in the City.’ But then we quickly learned it wasn’t that, and it was quite a different beast in itself. Initially, the whole “Fired” thing we didn’t even have as part of the creative, that came naturally as we had the first board room with Donald.
EM: What was that first year?
EM: We went back and re-watched the first Season in preparation for this interview, with Omarosa and Sam. KH: Do you like Sam? EM: He's an entertaining guy and he was featured in a documentary about Donald Trump recently.
KH: I was Co-Executive Producer.
KH: He was doing the push ups with the plant vase that he dropped. He didn't last long. He told me afterwards, he knew he was going to go soon, so he started making it memorable. That was his whole thing. He was like, “You know what? I’m gonna make this the best… I know I’m going soon, so I’m gonna start having fun with this, cause I want people to remember me.”
EM: Oh wow. So you worked very closely with Donald Trump.
EM: So you had an awareness of where some of the contestants felt like they were taking their characters?
EM: What was your original title?
EdiblesList.com I EdiblesMagazine.com
