Apprentice 3’s Kristen Was Previously ‘Murdered’ in Small Town X

One of the contestants on The Apprentice 3 might look a bit familiar to long-time reality TV fans. Then again, unless you look closely, maybe not (I must admit that I probably would not have been able to tell from photos alone). But either way, the fact is that Kristen Kirschner, formerly of Murder in Small Town X back in 2001, will be reappearing on our TV screens in 2005 – vying to become Donald Trump’s right-hand woman.

Do you remember Kristen? Think back to the show. Those of you who watched it will recall that the MiSTX was about a group of people (the contestants) brought in to help solve a series of murders in the fictional small town of Sunrise, Maine. Each week, they received more clues. But there was a price to pay – they had to play the killer’s game. At the end of each episode, two players would head out to different locations. One would return with a clue, the other would be “killed.”

One of the people chosen to go out was picked by the team leader each week, the other by a group vote. Kristen was, shall we say, not the most well-liked person in the group. She was sent out either by the group or leader five times before the killer finally got her in the sixth episode. Yes, her team was dedicated to getting rid of her no matter how much she fought back against the odds. And viewers didn’t exactly love her either, as RealityNewsOnline’s MiSTX recapper called her “The Alien Queen” at one time.

Well, Kristen has changed her hair color (see photos at the top of this article), but has she changed her personality? Will she get along better with the group of Apprentice wannabes than she did with most of the group of detective wannabes?

RealityNewsOnline has been in contact with one of Kristen’s friends, who has told us that she might have been “a drama queen” in MiSTX (Kristen’s own words on a message board post a couple weeks ago), but since then she had been really getting into the drama by taking acting classes – pretty much right up until the day she went to New York for The Apprentice. So we have to wonder: Is she there to be the next Bill or Kelly, or is she there to be the next Omarosa? Does she truly want the job or does she want the exposure? Indeed, one of the things she also said in that message board post is that she was the one most remembered from the show, apart from its winner (Angel Juarbe Jr., who was killed on 9/11 in the line of duty as a firefighter shortly after the final episode was aired, and who is also a Reality TV Hall of Fame inductee). So perhaps she’s looking for more notoriety.

The question of fame vs. winning the job might have been on NBC’s mind, as RealityNewsOnline has it on good authority that NBC did not actually want Kristen in the cast, specifically because of her previous stint on MiSTX. However, we are told that Executive Producer Mark Burnett, who knows good casting better than perhaps anybody else, fought for her and got her into the “Street Smart” group.

If her true intent is indeed to win The Apprentice 3, she has good qualifications coming into it. At the age of 31, she is a top-producing real estate broker (a friend of hers told RNO about Kristen’s nice house in California, which supports her success story). And we certainly already know that she will fight to win, no matter what the odds.

So as we sit down to watch, beginning this Thursday, we’ll keep an eye on Kristen. No matter what, she’s already been “killed” once on reality TV – at least in this series, the worst that can happen to her is getting fired.

David Bloomberg is the Editor of RealityNewsOnline and can be reached at RNO@pobox.com.

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