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Mr. Wonderful was hit with a question as blunt as his own “Shark Tank” critiques as CNN’s Chris Wallace wondered if he was “just playing a part.”
“Are you really that much of an a**hole?”
(Video: CNN)
On the latest installment of the HBO Max series “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” the host didn’t sugarcoat his query to entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary regarding the casting decisions for the long-running ABC reality show.
Before airing some clips looking back at examples of his guest’s candor with hopeful innovators and inventors alike, Wallace had said, “Well, let’s go back to the history of ‘Shark Tank,’ because the story goes that when executive producer Mark Burnett was casting the show, he met with you, and he said, we need a real a**hole, and you’re it. Is that true?”
“It is true. It is true. He just said to me, don’t go changing. We want the real you. Embrace your a**hole-ness, be one with the a**hole and bring it forward. And that’s all I’ve ever done,” responded O’Leary.
“Well, Kevin, I have to say you have played your role brilliantly over the years,” opined Wallace as clips included the shark calling one entrepreneur a cockroach as he cursed out another guest of the program. “Are you really that much of an a**hole? Or are you just playing a part?”
“You know, maybe it’s in the delivery. But here’s the bottom line, and I believe this to be true. I tell the truth. And so if your idea has no merit and it’s destined to bankrupt your family and wipe out your equity in your home because you’re mortgaging it for this idea, I would rather tell you the truth,” he said before contrasting his approach to that of his peers.
Mentioning Lori Greiner and Barbara Corcoran, O’Leary said, “I find it distasteful and almost disgusting when they say to them, oh, you know, you keep going. I’m not going to invest but you keep going, I call them out on it. I say, you know, you didn’t give ’em any money because, you know it’s crap. Why don’t you tell them the truth? Well, I don’t want to hurt their feelings. I don’t care about their feelings. I think they should know the truth.”
Despite embracing the “a**hole-ness,” in another portion of the interview highlighted by People before the episode premiered, a teary-eyed O’Leary reflected on his friendship with Mark Cuban and how the billionaire had helped bail him out of a tight spot during a foray into Canadian politics.
“I was $2 million in the hole, and I wanted to write the check and just clear the books, and the government said, ‘No, you can’t do that. You’re going to be subject to the laws of the land,” he told Wallace after explaining losing candidates had to pay back losses or face prison time. “So I called up Mark. I said, ‘Mark, I’m in trouble here. I need to hold an event where I can sell a lot of tickets to a lot of people who are going to attend, and I need you to fly up here and be beside me on the stage.”
“He never even questioned it,” recalled O’Leary. “He said, ‘Where do I have to be? I’ll be there,” adding after a sip of water, “Anyways, I owe him a lot for that. He saved my a**.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn’t researching current events and their impacts, you’ll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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