Robert Herjavec just wrapped up his 13th season as a shark on ABC’s “Shark Tank,” so what is it that keeps him coming back to the tank year after year? “The free food and catering on ‘Shark Tank’ is incredible,” laughs Herjavec in our exclusive video interview for Gold Derby (watch above). “All joking aside, I think that all of us are highly energized by being part of something that does so much good and is so inspirational to so many people.”
The multi-millionaire investor adds, “I think the thing that always amazes my friends is if you walk around with me half the people that come up to me are little kids — and by little I mean like eight and nine — and they love the show. It’s not just kids, it’s adults, and we’re all old and crusty and I think we get energized by people at that point of their life, where we can make a difference for them.”
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When “Shark Tank” won four consecutive Emmy Awards for Best Structured Reality Program (2014-2017), the six main sharks didn’t get to take home trophies because they weren’t credited as producers in the early years of the show. But now Herjavec, Barbara Corcoran, Mark Cuban, Lori Greiner, Daymond John and Kevin O’Leary are executive producers, so they would all be among the award recipients if “Shark Tank” were to prevail again.
“If I’m being completely sincere, as I always try to be, it kind of hurt our feelings [not to be rewarded],” Herjavec confesses. “We’re not big awards people but we are so invested in the show. It’s just the six of us, we’ve been there for a long time, we spend a lot of time on the show. We appreciate the academy giving us the honor for the show, but we felt like in our own small way we contributed to it, so we were really honored to be named as executive producers, and of course the year after we were made executive producers, we didn’t win, so we’re really excited about this year.”
Of all the main shark cast members, who in real life is the least like what we see on television? “Oh that’s a good question, no one’s ever asked me that in 14 years,” he admits. After contemplating for a moment, Herjavec answers, “Mark. Mark is a super nice human being. And that doesn’t always come across on TV, although I think it does in snippets. But I think for all of us, whenever I’ve had a personal issue or I’ve had some bad stuff in my life, Mark’s the first guy that reaches out.”
Also in our video interview, the Croatian-Canadian businessman talks about what makes the perfect pitch, how entrepreneurship is “the great equalizer” and why Donald Trump would be a fun guest shark in the future.
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