Face-to-face conversation are used on "The Apprentice," produced mainly for the purpose of entertaining viewers via this boardroom scene. The board room is one of many aspect of this TV show that crafts a business-like atmosphere and has specific editorial procedures are used throughout the show in order to amplify the contestants' divergent personalities. In this interview-like section of the episode, Lord Sugar is the interviewer and he is ultimately the one that the boys have to impress in order to influence the outcome and essentially not get fired. .
The methodical layout of the board room makes the hierarchy of power in the room obvious. Lord Sugar is seated at the center on the table, in the biggest chair, and he sits with his chair higher than the boys. Even though the boys know that Lord Sugar holds the most power in the room he feels like he needs to assert his authority by being physically positioned higher up. This means that the boys are forced to literally look up to him. The candidates are forced to sit on fixed chairs facing forward, directly towards Lord Sugar, taking accountability and signifying how they only have to answer to him rather than each other. Lord Sugar on the other hand, has a chair that allows him to rotate and focus on each of the candidates, individually showing respect but also indicating that Lord Sugar will address each candidate by looking at him directly, which was manufactured intentionally by the producers so as to make the boys feel tense under the gaze of Lord Sugar, affecting them and in the end, the outcome. .
In the opening scene Lord Sugar instigates the conversation and his speaking first tells us he has most of the power. He addresses the boys as "gentlemen" which tells us that he treats them as equals. However, Lord Sugar ends this with the blunt question, "What went wrong?" implying that he wants to get straight to the point and that he wants to get down to why the boys failed the task at hand.
