2. Donald and Ivana's Affair (with Pizza Hut)

Dan Bobkoff,Anna Mazarakis,Sarah Wyman,Claire RawlinsonAug 13, 2020, 06:56 IST

When Pizza Hut can't get anyone to buy their new Stuffed Crust Pizza, help comes from an unlikely pair: Donald and Ivana Trump. We hear the behind the scenes making of this ad, and in turn, the making of a president. PLUS: Our first installment of Uncut with Household Name's producers.

Produced by Dan Bobkoff, Anna Mazarakis, Clare Rawlinson, and Sarah Wyman.

Transcript

Note: This transcript may contain errors.

DAN BOBKOFF: It's the mid '90s and Pizza Hut has a problem.

It spent a lot of money and time developing a pizza it thought would be revolutionary.

AD: Here it is: stuffed crust pizza from Pizza Hut!

DB: Stuffed. Crust. Pizza. It was covered in cheese and bulging with more cheese in that forgotten wasteland: the crust.

But... no one wanted it.

JANET LYONS: It was a new product called stuffed crust. The cheese was in the crust. They tried to sell it a million different ways and it just would not sell.

DB: So it became Janet Lyons' job to fix that. She was a kind of a star writer on Madison Avenue. Her bosses called her and her writing partners, and told them: Pizza Hut says we're finished - unless we can get Americans to buy stuffed crust pizza!

JL: They were always walking out the door. They were always 'this is it! They're firing the agency! It's over!' We'd screwed up something, I don't know what, but it... this was just the normal kind of thing.

DB: So Janet and the team got to work.

JL: And we were sitting in our office kind of staring at blank walls, and our third partner Dennis immediately, I mean, this never happens, but within seconds of us thinking about this assignment, said 'well, the main thing about this pizza is we should tell people they should eat it backwards. They should eat it the wrong way. Because obviously the best part's in the back of the pizza. So right off the bat, that's the way this product should be sold.'

DB: They're brainstorming. The wrong way… who would do something so wrong?

JL: And I think we went right to celebrities. But have them actually be people that are doing something the wrong way right this minute.

DB: And in this era, who were two of the biggest names in New York tabloids? Who was fighting in the open? Who would be the biggest coup if they appeared in the same ad?

IVANA TRUMP: Donald, Donald, Donald...

DONALD TRUMP: Ivana, Ivana, Ivana….

DB: From Business Insider and Stitcher, this is Household Name.

The show about brands you know, and stories you don't.

I'm Dan Bobkoff.

Today: Did Donald and Ivana save Pizza Hut's Stuffed Crust, or did Stuffed Crust save Donald and Ivana?

How did this Frankenstein of a pizza managed to change the course of history and help create a president?

We are going to start by looking at the ad itself: how a bitter divorce inspired its creators, and the sordid details of Ivana and Donald, on set with a stuffed crust.

Then, we'll see how this ad was part of a hungry cycle of tabloid media, Donald Trump and fast food - all feeding each other's brands.

And finally, we'll follow the stuffed crust story through to today - and go back to the Plaza where it all began.

Stay with us.

ACT I

DB: I imagine there was an urgent meeting at Pizza Hut in the early 90s that went something like this:

'Our sales are down 20%,' one person says. Another pipes up: 'Our customers are starting to check out Papa John's.' Someone slams the table: 'We need to get people back into our restaurants! We need to innovate!'

Then in a backroom somewhere, a guy has a eureka moment: 'We can put the cheese in the crust!'

He brings it to his bosses, and they're like… 'I don't know…. Will people get it?'

That's the version in my head at least. What we DO know for sure is that Pizza Hut tests it out in a bunch of cities, and customers are kind of meh about it.

So this is when Pizza Hut turns to its ad agency and says: 'Save us or you're fired!'

Enter Michael Campbell and Janet Lyons. These two wrote a lot of ads together. Big ads. Celebrity ads. Super bowl ads.

MICHAEL CAMPBELL: I mean, we just fell in love. Janet is married... to somebody else... but you hear about business husbands and wives, and I think we've come as close to that as. (laughs)

DB: Michael and Janet were both executive creative directors at the ad agency, BBDO. And after Pizza Hut threatens to pull its business, they get to work in their writers' room, holed up, throwing ideas against the wall

MC: Well I think part of the process ise... the word "right," you know, is loosely defined.

DB: There was that brilliant idea of eating the stuffed crust pizza backwards… the WRONG way. And they start thinking of things that were wrong.

JL: We were thinking more of who's in the news... what's in the moment [crosstalk]

MC: What's going to be famous, what's going to get everybody talking.

JL: What would get people talking?

DB: They had a lot of ideas… some even became ads: Ringo Starr and the Monkees. Dennis Rodman. But they had a bigger idea.

JL: So Donald Trump and Ivana were getting divorced. The divorce was all over the paper, it was huge. There was still talking about it. It was still a news story that they were fighting and they hated each other, and nobody would see them obviously together ever. They despised each other.

DB: They knew Donald and Ivana would be a killer pairing.

JL: And we didn't think that Donald and Ivana would say yes. Because they really did seem like they hated each other and they wouldn't do the spot. So we were quite shocked when the phone rang back very quickly after we phoned the agent saying 'oh yeah. They're in.'

DB: OK, so before we go any further, you have to hear this ad. The setting: The Plaza Hotel, which Ivana redecorated and Donald lost to bankruptcy. Donald and Ivana get close.

DT: Do you really think this is the right thing for us to be doing, Ivana?

IT: What will people think?

DT: Let 'em talk!

IT: Donald, Donald, Donald...

DT: Ivana, Ivana, Ivana...It's wrong isn't it?

IT: But it feels so right.

DT: Then it's a deal?

IT: Yes! We eat our pizza the wrong way!

DT: Crust first.

AD VOICE: Introducing stuffed crust pizza from Pizza Hut, with a ring of cheese baked into a totally new, thinner crust, you'll want to eat it the wrong way: crust first?

IT: May I have the last slice?

DT: Actually, you're only entitled to half

DB: In fact, in the real divorce she got less than half.

The making of this cheesy ad tells you a lot about Trump as a person and Trump as a brand.

To get a sense of Trump as a person, let's take a moment and talk about what actually went into making this ad, behind the scenes.

MC: We don't just sit down quietly and type out our scripts. We actually perform them.

JL: Get up, perform them. We act 'em. go into a voice, you know, and you become these characters.

MC: And I might say 'it's wrong, isn't it...'

JL: And I would all of a sudden start talking like Ivana and thinking to myself 'now what would Ivana say if he started saying it's wrong...' and I would probably say 'It feels so right Donald, but it feels so right.' And that's a good way to write, because you really become the character. These words just start flowing out of you, and all of a sudden, it's...

MC: And you quickly run over to a pad and write everything down. (laughs) Big limousine rolls up, and he's wearing a tuxedo!

JL: Yeah, he's dressed for the part...

MC: He's dressed for the part... and we had...

JL: And he wanted to start right away. Could not understand... [crosstalk]

MC: He was ready! And then Ivana comes in and she has three wardrobe people, two makeup people, a hair person... and we had our own, but she didn't want to use them.

JL: She wouldn't use anybody, no.

MC: And they go off and I think we waited two hours.

JL: Yeah, we did. He was getting ticked.

DB: Finally, they start. And then between takes, Donald Trump starts micromanaging.

JL: He would come over in between takes and he would say 'can you run back, I want to see the film,' and then he'd say 'ok, I want you to use that take. Ok, I want you to use this opening. Ok, I think that's the better of this...' and we'd turn to him and say 'Donald, you're not cutting this commercial. Like, we're gonna cut the commercial, we're making the commercial, you're just getting paid to be in the commercial.' And he's like 'ok. When this is over, you'll see that I was right about every single take that I just told you to pick. You'll see. I was right.' And I just thought this guy's too much... I just can't... we had never met anyone like him before. Everything about him was so... off the charts! (laughs)

MC: He even got involved with the lighting! So we get on the set, the camera's all ready to roll, and they're doing the last little touch ups and Ivana's now standing by the window, and Donald turns to me, and he says 'c'mere.' And he looks over and he says 'I don't think the lighting's very good on Ivana.' And I say 'well what do you mean?' and he said 'well, look at her butt. And (laughs)—

JL: Yeah! And he was right!

MC: He thought it didn't look...

JL: It wasn't complimenting her figure the right way!

MC: I always said it was basically he was so critical about that because he was associated with her butt. So he didn't want anything that reflected on him to look bad.

JL: Not that he cared about her... (laughs)

MC: No, I don't think he cared as much about her, but it was like 'hey, wait a minute, we're divorced but I was married...'

JL: So make sure she looks good! [crosstalk]

DB: Well that was his brand!

JL: Yeah! Exactly.

DB: So they're filming, and they only have a few hours left on the shoot when Michael and Janet realize the ending just isn't working. They needed to change the script., their writing partner had an idea.

MC: And Dennis, our third partner, said 'I think I have a better ending for this thing. What about if they both go for the last piece of pizza, and what if Donald says 'sorry Ivana, you're only entitled to half.'' So I was like, 'that's great. That is really funny,' ok.

So we go over to ask them about this change, because they'd agreed to a script and lawyers agree to the script and everybody agrees to the script and this was not a kind of thing where you could just go off into other things, so we go over to Donald and Ivana and 'we say we have this new ending where you say 'can I have the last slice' and you say 'no, you're only entitled to half,'' and she says 'absolutely not! that is vulgar! Absolutely not!' And he goes 'What do you mean? It's really funny! We're doing it!' And she says 'Absolutely not! I will not do it!' and he just looks at her and he goes 'we're going it.' (laughs) And we're all just kind of standing there holding our breath because she didn't...

MC: We've only got one take.

JL: And she says she'd only do it once. And luckily he just... he knocked it out of the park. He's a very good actor. You didn't have to do a second take on anything with him. He gets it the first time. He knows exactly his persona. And luckily he got it on the first time because she wasn't gonna do it again because she didn't like it.

DB: And it doesn't stop there… Then they realized they had another problem.

MC: None of us could understand Ivana.

JL: We had to dub her lines.

MC: We had to dub about I think 70% of her lines. And uh I don't think we ever told anybody. (laughs)

DB: Until now!

MC: Until now!

DB: Does Ivana know? [crosstalk]

MC: Breaking news!

JL: Probably not! Probably not.

DB: All this was nearly a decade before The Apprentice. It was two decades before Donald Trump would become President. And yet, this messy tabloid divorce became fodder to sell pizza!

So, OK, we have Donald and Ivana. Crust and cheese. What really brought all these together?

TIM O'BRIEN: The Trump ecosystem.

DB: This is Tim O'Brien. He's spent a lot of time with Donald Trump over the years . He wrote TrumpNation, a book that came out in 2005 at the peak of The Apprentice, and for which Trump famously sued O'Brien for reporting Trump's net worth was far less than he liked to brag.

Tim believes the Donald and Ivana Stuffed Crust ad perfectly represents that whole ecosystem of Trump, the media, and major brands — all feeding off each other.

TO: Donald Trump's at the center of an unvirtuous circle of mutually-reinforcing and lucrative arrangements that benefit people either in terms of getting themselves out in front of other people or making a lot of money.

DB: But who was the Donald Trump who arrived for the Stuffed Crust shoot that morning, tuxedo-ready, bowling over the crew with his stage presence? Why was he so enthusiastic to answer the call to sell Stuffed Crust Pizza that day in 1995? Well, here's what led him there.

Donald Trump had spent the '80s putting his stamp on Manhattan — the Grand Hyatt then Trump Tower, then a bunch of casinos in Atlantic City. This was when he was really a developer, but he was beginning his transition from actual businessman to a brand that transcends any one business. He acquires a yacht, airline, and launches a board game that fails.

BOARD GAME AD: My new game is Trump: The Game...

TO: Trump was the young little Reaganite missile launched into the imagination of Middle America. And that it was ok to be full of yourself. It was ok to have outsized appetites. It was ok to treat women like toys and have fast cars and big houses and to celebrate all that.

DB: And through all this he becomes a regular in the papers.

TO: The single biggest story in February of 1990 was Donald Trump's divorce from his wife Ivana because he was having an affair with Marla Maples.

DB: You could have been forgiven for not knowing this was the same time Nelson Mandela was released from prison

NEWS: The tempestuous love triangle of Donald, Ivana, and Marla made headlines around the world.

TO: And it became part of a tabloid war with the Daily News siding with Ivana. And the New York Post siding with Trump.

LINDA STASI: It became front page news all over the place.

DB: Linda Stasi has been covering Trump for New York tabloids for years — first at Newsday, then the New York Post, and now the Daily News. She was on the Trump beat when the affair with Marla Maples broke.

LS: Everyone's benefiting because if you're covering fun stuff, which a tabloid does as well as cover serious news, he had a lot of fun stuff and he actually gave me the first access to Marla Maples.

DB: The Post and the News put the messy divorce on their covers for 11 straight days that month. It was even in the New York Times. Newsweek. On TV.

NEWS: So, where do Donald and Ivana go from here?

DB: Did he actually like all the coverage of his divorce?

LS: He loved it.

LARRY KING: Welcome to Larry King Live!

DT: With me it turns out to be like 22 days of tabloids and tabloids…

LARRY KING: Why do you think?

DT: I don't know perhaps you can tell me.

DB: Donald and Ivana's divorce was tabloid gold. A brash, lavish, larger than life couple fighting over a prenup. She was rumored to be promised $25 million. Or maybe it was $10 million. There were a lot of numbers flying around. In any event, she took him to court for more money. And the court of public opinion.

NEWS: Donald Trump is back in the news. Perhaps we should say still in the news.

LS: If you lived in New York, you were aware of the Donald. I mean he's been around since Jesus was in swaddling pampers. I mean the guy's been here forever, and making a lot of news forever. I started covering him in the '90s and his reputation was that he was a kind of like a Barnum for our time, you know? He was like a PT Barnum and he made news and he knew how to get news and he fed us and we fed him back.

DB: This bitter fight was having another effect: No matter what the headline, it was making the two of them even bigger stars.

NEWS: It's not just a marriage that's on the line, it's Donald Trump's reputation as a dealmaker in a business he'll find brand new. And as Zsa Zsa Gabor once observed, you never really know a man until you have divorced him.

DB: Even Saturday Night Live:

[BUZZ]

DT: Yes?

SNL: Mr. Trump?

DT: Yes?

SNL: Mrs. Trump is here to see you.

DT: Send her in.

IT: Hello, Donald.

DT: I should tell you all the sordid details of this divorce will be incorporated into my board game.

DB: Newsweek wrote at the time that publicity was his cocaine. He'd feed stories to the press all the time, and then...

DT: They just make up a quote, 'Donald said this and Donald said that…' I never even spoke to the people.

DB: How much do you think he was actually orchestrating the leaks and -

LS: 100%. There used to be an old expression at a club in New York that was too much is never enough. And that's him. Too much is never enough. There's not enough adoration, there's not enough print, there's not enough media coverage for him. At all.

DT: I don't talk about relationships. I don't talk about the personal aspects of it and they go with lies to an extent that I've never seen before. They make up stories.

DB: And while tabloids and People magazine are splashing headlines like "Ivana better deal" and "Billion Dollar Blowup", Trump was in the news for another reason, too.

TO: He had this brush with sort of existential reality.

DB: That's next.

ACT II

DB: We're back.

NEWS: Donald Trump disappointed his many creditors today. He announced he could not make scheduled payments of more than 30 million dollars.

NEWS: His empire could be at risk of collapse if the New Jersey Casino Commission decides not to approve Trump's bailout plan.

TO: You know, from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, Trump was this creation of bank debt.

DB: This is Tim O'Brien again.

TO: He was able to borrow billions, more than three billion dollars, from some of the biggest banks in the world that he used to fund this acquisition spree for businesses he really didn't understand and was horrible at managing.

DB: Around the same time as his divorce, a lot of other things were happening in his life that would eventually lead to this crazy ad.

NEWS: In New York City, Trump has unsold apartments, vacant retail space in Trump Tower, and undeveloped land.

DB: This is in 1990.

NEWS: In Atlantic City, business is off at two Trump casinos!

TO: He just made a series of really bad decisions, and it all came tumbling down. And he was on the hook for about $900 million of that, that he couldn't pay back. And he almost went personally bankrupt. So he had this brush with sort of existential reality, combined with the fact that this myth that the U.S. media and the business press had created of him as the best businessman in America, it was now plainly apparent that he was a trainwreck.

DB: He sold his yacht. He defaulted on his airline's debt. He lost the Plaza Hotel to creditors. But he got his bailout and was living on an allowance from the banks with his new wife Marla.

TO: And in order to survive, he essentially turns himself into a cartoon.

DB: Everything in Donald Trump's life is leading to this Pizza Hut ad.

TO: I think one, it's this moment when Trump realizes he can make hay off of being a human shingle. If he puts his name on almost anything, he can get some cash coming in.

DB: He realizes he can be a big deal without actually building things.

TO: He would walk around saying 'I own that building with my name on it,' but in fact in most cases he didn't own the buildings. He simply helped manage them and collected a fee for having his name on them.

DB: And this might be why when Michael and Janet — inspired by all the tabloid hoopla — call up and ask, 'hey, wanna be in an ad for pizza with your ex-wife?' Trump says yes. Immediately.

TO: I think that Pizza Hut ad is a turning point in Trump's career because it's when the door opens to him deciding that I'm happy being a brand, I'll be a ubiquitous brand, and I really don't care where the brand resides, even if it resides in a box of pizza.

DB: Why do you think they said yes?

JL: (laughs)

MC: Oh, because he's... he... he is... let's just extrapolate politics from this. The man is a genius. I mean, he is a genius in terms of understanding branding, understanding the value of publicity.

JL: I don't think anybody quite gets it the way he does.

MC: Yeah. I really don't.

JL: Also they both got paid a million dollars.

DB: Not bad for working 8am to 2pm one day.

TO: That Pizza Hut money in the mid '90s was real money to Donald Trump. A million dollars in the mid 1990s was real money to him.

DB: All that sweet, sweet stuffed crust money.

TO: Yeah, stuffed crust full of dollars.

NY PIZZA HUT AD: Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Donald Trump. We're all cut from the same cloth. And that cloth is very, very large...

DB: Donald Trump would go on to sell Pizza Hut again in 2000…

NY PIZZA HUT AD: You ever wonder why New Yorkers have such big mouths?

DT: Go big or go home!

DB: McDonalds, Mattresses, Long defunct websites, A Visa ad where Trump ends up in a dumpster!

VISA AD: I thought he was doing so well!

DB: Even another pizza ad! This time for Dominos!

TRUMP DOMINOS: Here's the deal: you give me those 3 pizzas, only I'll give you just $5 a piece.

DB: Dominos ended up on the Apprentice! That show, of course, made him an even bigger star.

TO: I think brand Trump is about reveling in your own appetites, whether it's food or cars or objects or money. That it's okay to be rich, cartoonish and self-involved. And that's essentially what that brand is.

DB: We talked to some people who'd worked on ad campaigns involving Trump and we asked them if Trump was an effective salesman, and for the most part: pretty much.

The Pizza Hut ad was a sensation.

There were news reports about it. And finally people started buying stuffed crust pizza.

It became a billion dollar business for the company almost over night.

One company vice president popped into a Pizza Hut right after. A customer told him she had come to eat her pizza backwards… because that's how Ivana does it.

The pizza ads with Trump that followed all tried to tap into the same magic - or as some might call it - the same unvirtuous cycle: Trump's surprise appearance with a new product, the tabloid coverage that followed, then the sales spike and career boon for everyone involved.

The later ads got some traction, but none were quite the sensation of the Donald and Ivana pairing. The shock value of seeing of them back together is hard to beat.

Everyone benefited. Especially Donald Trump. The Stuffed Crust ad was a significant step in the making of his personal brand. That led to The Apprentice, and you could argue, the presidency.

Michael and Janet from the ad agency benefited, too.

MC: Personally for the two of us, that commercial was really good for us.

DB: Another ad agency actually called J. Walter Thompson poached Michael Campbell almost entirely because he'd made this ad.

MD: At that time, Domino's was at the Deutsch agency, and they weren't happy, they were thinking of making a move, and the account person reached out to the CMO, the chief marketing officer, and said 'you know Mike Campbell is there now, and he's the guy that did stuffed crust.' And of course I'm more than willing to take the claim for it, even though Janet's sitting next to me (laughs)

JL: No, but I mean you brought a huge piece of business into a big agency based on....

MC: And that was worth 128 million dollars!

JL: Yeah.

MC: To... to J. Walter Thompson because my reputation of having done stuffed crust.

DB: But years later, he has regrets.

MC: I was very upset that he was elected president.

DB: It's November 2016. Donald Trump has just completed his journey from middling businessman to master marketer to TV star to president of the United States of America.

ELECTION NIGHT: Ladies and gentlemen: the president-elect of the United States, Donald John Trump.

DB: Michael is watching all this and, in a small way, feels a little responsible.

MC: For a little bit, I wouldn't even tell anybody I worked on that commercial. Because I felt I was sort of like complicit in, in you know his road up to you know this moment. Back, right after the election, I was moving, packing up a house, and I came across a packet of storyboards that I had from that campaign.

DB: The Donald and Ivana Pizza Hut campaign.

JL: You always used to have the celebrities autograph the scripts. I never...

MC: And um it says 'great job Mike! Donald Trump...' It's that signature! So I said well I... well my first impulse was I was gonna tear it up because it was just that first reaction...

DB: Why? Why would you want to tear it up?

MC: Um, I just... you know, it...that commercial to me is sort of bittersweet. Because, um, if you go back in a bubble to 1995, he wasn't political, there was nothing other than... he was a big, larger than life braggart, but you never feared or worried that he'd be running the country. (laughs) And... I just felt that he was the wrong guy, and now, from the year and a half prior to the election, everything he said and all the positions, it just offended me personally. So... I, uh, took the script and I asked my partner Paul, I said 'should I... I was gonna tear it up?' And he said 'well why don't you auction it? You know, get rid of it? See if you can sell it.'

DB: It was to be his little penance for any role he had in creating Donald Trump's public image.

So he gives the storyboard to an auctioneer, and the guy does a total Donald Trump move. First the auctioneer sends it to the New York Post gossip section.

MC: Oh, it was on page six! This guy is a great showman, so he went in, he told some, you know Page Six reporter, and then it just went crazy. I mean, I was, all of a sudden I became interested and I was googling, and there were papers in Europe and in the Daily Mail I think in London... and part of my idea of selling it was that I was gonna use the money to fund anti-Trump (laughs) organizations.

JL: Not sure there would have been enough money for that. (laughs)

MC: No, of course. It's like taking a bucket of water throwing it into the ocean…

JL: A little eyedropper!

MC: Thinking you're going to desalinate it!

DB: Then he says the auctioneer stiffed him… and that he only paid up a year and a half later when Michael threatened to publicly shame him on some Business Insider podcast. But when Donald Trump won, Janet didn't have the same reaction

JL: First of all, I think that when Donald Trump was running for president, it gave me... you know, he says a lot of crazy braggadocious things, but I also saw the man at the shoot. I saw the guy who could make a smart decision fast, I saw the guy who could take in everything that was going on in the room. I saw the guy who said hello to every single person on the set and remembered their names. Um, I saw the guy who was on time, I saw the guy who could make the deal quickly. I saw a lot of things! That were not just the boob that everybody was talking about.

And so, I think that helped me the whole time see the election differently. If I had just saw the man that was running for president, I probably would have been in the same head as everyone else. But a part of me thought, 'this guy is just so friggin' smart! Like he just... gets things that like so many other people just do not get, and so instinctually!' I did not vote for Donald Trump, but I definitely did not feel like this is just some wacko who's running and this whole thing is a big joke. And I did not at three o'clock in the morning sit there like my husband did and just in complete shock and awe. I was completely feeling like, 'no, I kind of get this.'

DB: Do you two disagree on this?

JL: Oh, we totally do!

MC: Oh, forever! [crosstalk]

JL: Don't get too... don't get too drinks in either one of us and have this conversation, that's for sure! We'll kill each other! (laughs) But you've gotta be really careful! And there's been dinner parties where I've... maybe just said what I just said to you, and I've not been invited back

DB: Pizza plays a different role in Donald's life now.

NEWS: And during his visit to the pizza ranch in Waukee, Trump grabbed a new endorsement.

DB: Now Pizza Hut's ads focus a lot more on the pizza and their price.

PIZZA HUT AD: Medium Pizza Hut pizzas, just 5.95 each.

DB: It's running one ad about the company's 60th anniversary that mentions Stuffed Crust and the New York pizza, but nary a mention of Trump.

In fact, a market survey from Simmons Research recently found Trump's name is more likely to have the opposite effect for brands, now that he's president.

The survey asked consumers if they'd be more or less likely to buy a product that the President endorses - half said it'd put them off, and about a third said it'd make them boycott the brand.

Nordstrom Rack is one of the most obvious examples of this new reality: it stopped carrying Ivanka Trump's clothing label early last year, and the President did NOT like that.

The company said it wasn't performing well anymore. But these days, everything is political.

While Donald Trump is in the White House, I found his ex-wife Ivana back at the Plaza Hotel recently.

The Trump ecosystem that worked so well for them in the '90s is still in full force.

Tabloid photographers line up to take her picture. One says: 'we used to do this all the time Ivana.'

DB: TV cameramen get in position. Sinatra plays over the PA. But there aren't that many of them. Not like the '90s.

CAMERAMAN: It's not like there are forty of us...

DB: Rita Cosby, a TV and radio anchor, who calls herself a journalist, introduces Ivana this way.

RITA COSBY: Everybody my friend, the beautiful and brilliant Ivana Trump.

DB: Everyone's remarking that it's fitting she's back at the Plaza.

RC: She really has come full circle and her design expertise brought us all the way to these beautiful chandeliers which is really fantastic, all the way from Italy! Which is all the more fitting that we are absolutely here today for this announcement.

IT: Health is most important thing we have. Money cannot buy you happiness...

DB: If 1995 Ivana was selling pizza, 2018 Ivana is hawking a diet.

IT: Every block you have a fast food restaurant and it becomes very easy to just order a pie, pizza pie and give it to kids...

MEDIA: How often do you speak to the President?

IT: Uh, I'm really not going to go into politics but we speak.

DB: But just like then, that's not really why the media is here.

MEDIA: And I just want to review, have you discussed it at all with the First Lady Melania or with the President?

IT: I'm not going to talk politics and White House or about my ex or First Lady of America. I'm the first Trump lady, better that I can say...

DB: Because everyone here knows the real product is not whatever Donald or Ivana is selling. They're the product.

Ivana's entourage rushes her out to the street. A black Suburban muscles its way through traffic with a siren.

MEDIA: Ivana, thank you very much...

DB: A horde of reporters follows her off the sidewalk as she's whisked away in a flash.

And I'm left there, still holding my microphone. And I never did get to ask her how she felt about stuffed crust pizza.

Oh and that's not it for Pizza Hut and Trump. Up next - our first installment of Household Name, Uncut.

ACT III

DB: And now it's time for Household Name Uncut. Okay so...when we report these stories we learn so many crazy facts through the process that we can't possibly fit them all into the episode. Our editors going to us like 'you have to lose all these details,' and we're like 'no! We're gonna find a way to put them in the episode.' This is that place. So, Anna Mazarakis,

ANNA MAZARKIS: Hey!

DB: Clare Rawlinson,

CLARE RAWLINSON: Hello!

DB: and Sarah Wyman

SARAH WYMAN: Hi!

DB: This is our chance to resurrect our favorite stories that we learned from this episode. Hey guys

ALL: Woohoo!

CR: I thought you were gonna say this is a chance to undermine our editors.

DB: Already did that. Alright, so I want each of you to tell me one thing you learned through reporting this story that you just can't stop thinking about.

CR: Who's going first?

DB: I vote Sarah Wyman.

SW: Alright, I bring you some cheese facts. So the most interesting thing I learned while reporting this episode: if you had to guess how much mozzarella string cheese produced in America did you think went to the stuffed crust pizza?

DB: I'm gonna say 5%.

SW: You are WAY off. The correct answer is 50%.

ALL: 50??

SW: So half of the mozzarella produced in the United States in 1995 went straight into the stuffed crust pizza! And Pizza Hut as a whole was buying like 1-2% of all the cheese in general in America.

DB: Like all kinds of cheese?

SW: All kinds of cheese. And this particular story is actually about cheddar cheese. I didn't know this, but cheddar cheese plays kind of an outsized role in deciding how much dairy products cost in the US. It's not like this anymore but back in 1995 when this story was unfolding, there was this thing called "The National Cheese Exchange" and the idea was that all these dairy farmers and people who bought cheese would get together in Wisconsin, (which is arguably the least surprising part of this story) and they'd trade cheese shares. And they started with cheddar, which you could buy in like these giant blocks or in barrels, like an entire barrel of cheddar cheese. And however much that cheese sold for was used to determine how much cheddar cheese sold in the rest of the US, when different dairy farmers were selling it, and then that in turn was used to decide how much all dairy in the US was gonna cost that week.

DB: That's really powerful cheddar.

CR: Was this like Wisconsin's Wall Street?

SW: (laughs) Basically. And at the time, Pizza Hut was thinking that they should get in on the action, so they bought a seat on the dairy exchange. And the first time they went was in the early '90s and the same day, totally by coincidence, the market bottomed out. And everybody started freaking out, all these cheese farmers were terrified that their cheese was going to be worthless.

DB: Coincidence?

CR: Yeah, was it a coincidence?

SW: Well there was a professor at the University of Wisconsin who thought otherwise and he commented to the press and because of that everybody started getting all riled up and directing that anxiety at Pizza Hut. They had kind of a PR crisis on their hands. People were calling the headquarters, apparently there were protests—

DB: Actual protests?

SW: Actual protests, like angry dairy farmers with signs.

CR: I was just trying to imagine what would be written on the placards at those protests.

DB: Pickets cheese? No it doesn't quite work. Cutting room floor? [laughter] And now our segment for the things we cut out of our segment for the things we cut out of our segment of the show.

SW: Anyway it all worked out in the end, nobody can prove Pizza Hut is to blame, they still claim that they were just there buying cheese shares like everybody else but it was all very mysterious.

DB: Wow, alright well we just learned a lot about cheese and cheese prices. Next up is Anna Mazarakis.

ANNA MAZARAKIS: Ok well four years after Pizza Hut put Donald and Ivana Trump in an ad… they actually made an attack ad against Hillary Clinton of all people.

DB: What?

AM: So at the time, Bill Clinton is just finishing up his presidency and Hillary Clinton is preparing to run for Senator of New York. She hadn't actually announced her candidacy yet but Pizza Hut decided to run this ad featuring this woman who looked an awful lot like Hillary Clinton… Here's the ad.

CLINTON IMPERSONATOR: Oh boy I gotta tell you, this big New Yorker is the quintessential New York pizza. This is what pizza is supposed to be. Dripping with so much cheese you've got to fold it to eat it. Man, it is New York big: 16 inches across. How do I know so much about New York pizza? Because New York...I want to be your next Senator!

PIZZA HUT AD VOICE: The big New Yorker pizza from Pizza Hut. Big enough to feed all your constituents at a very un-New York price:

$9.99. What do you think this is, Arkansas?

The big New Yorker pizza from Pizza Hut. Another one of the best pizzas under one roof.

AM: "I wanna be your senator" [laughter]

DB: That was really good. Wait so this was an actual ad that appeared on TV?

AM: Yeah, so she was expected to announce her candidacy any day and of course she would go on to win that seat and hold it for eight years. But at that point she had no claim, as they said, to this New Yorker style pizza. What makes this even more controversial is that New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani was expected to announce his bid to run against her as the Republican. And one of his top campaign backers - a guy named Kenneth Langone - was on the board of Pizza Hut's parent company, Tricon Foods. Well it turns out that Tricon gave a couple of thousand dollars to Giuliani's exploratory committee. So of course this got political, Clinton came out and said this ad amounted to an illegal campaign contribution. And you guys saw the ad, it was pretty against her.

DB: Yeah I can almost imagine it saying: "Paid for by Giuliani and Pizza Hut."

AM: (laughs) Yeah definitely. But then of course, Giuliani and Langone came out and said there was no wrongdoing and Pizza Hut said it was just "tongue-in-cheek fun." But you can't ignore the political coincidences here.

DB: Yeah I mean don't you feel like we're living in a vortex of all these figures from the '90s I mean we have, that all appeared in Pizza Hut ads? We have Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Dennis Rodman, whose now ambassador to North Korea was in a Pizza Hut ad, you have Rudy Giuliani making a comeback. Really if you want to see the future of politics, just watch Pizza Hut ads.

AM: I know! Makes me want to eat more pizza instead of watching the news now.

DB: I guess that's, I guess the ad's working.

AM: (laughs)

DB: Alright, lastly, we have Clare Rawlinson who found another detail that we had to cut out of our episode but it's being resurrected now.

CR: Yeah well we've just spent what, 25 minutes or so talking about this particular ad with Donald and Ivan at the center of it but there was another ad, another stuffed crust pizza ad, that very very almost happened but never went through and I'm going to explain how.

So you remember Janet and Michael, our friends on Madison Avenue who made the Donald and Ivana ad? You know when they were considering controversial celebrities that might make for a good like 'oooh, they're doing something wrong, there's something really saucy about that'? Pete Rose was another option for a stuffed crust ad - the legendary, the disgraced Cincinnati Reds baseball player?

DB: The infamous.

CR: Banned for life in 1989 for betting on games that he played in and the he managed. And so Janet and Michael had it all planned out, and they told us exactly what the ad would have looked like:

MC: So you've gotta imagine a typical American street. Main Street USA, the light is dappling down (laughs) onto the street, there's Pete and this cute little seven year-old with a baseball mitt and a glove, and he looks like Ron Howard in Mayberry and so uh… the kid's walking down, he says 'Mr. Rose, I just don't get it! You know, you had one of the highest, you know, records of anybody in baseball...' and he starts reciting each one of his individual records. And he says, 'Mr. Rose, why aren't you in the baseball hall of fame?' And he says, 'Well, Jimmy,' and of course, bus turn, he takes out a box of Pizza Hut from nowhere, and he says, 'Well, I guess it's because I eat my pizza the wrong way, crust first. 'And then you go to the product shot and you come back and, uh, he says, uh, 'So Jimmy, so do you like stuffed crust pizza?' And he says, 'You bet, Mr. Rose!' 'Wrong choice of words, Jimmy. Wrong choice of words.'

DB: That would've been so good!

CR: Innocent little Jimmy. But twist... so right before that commercial was be filmed - it was all planned out, ready to film, literally the night before! - Pete Rose could not resist and he leaked to the Wall Street Journal that he was back and going to do a Pizza Hut commercial. Which, by the way, is the most hilarious way of announcing you're back on the scene. But him leaking that led to Pizza Hut having to cancel the ad. He'd spoiled their surprise and taken away all their news value from it. So Pizza Hut lost half a million dollars canceling the shoot they'd already paid for to the production team.

DB: I think it shows, whatever you think of Donald Trump, he knows how to play this game in a way that Pete Rose just doesn't.

CR: So true. But final fact, and I just know that you'll appreciate this Dan, with your love of puns. Pete Rose also trades on his relationship in the way that Donald and Ivana do and there was a reality show made, you may know it—

DB: Oh no.

CR: About Pete Rose and his wives, called "Pete Rose: Hits and Mrs."

DB: Oh God.

CR: M-R-S.

DB: It's not called "A Rose By Any Other Name?"

CR: Oh! See you can just generate these puns—

DB: They didn't call me!

CR: At like, at command.

DB: It's my only skill or problem.

Alright, those are the producers of our show: Clare Rawlinson, Anna Mazarakis, and Sarah Wyman. And I'm Dan Bobkoff.

To hear Household Name without ads and to get access to the first six episodes right now, sign up for Stitcher Premium at stitcherpremium.com/householdname and use promo code "HOUSEHOLD" to get your first month free. And we want to be a household name podcast! So rate and review us to help get us into every home in America and eventually, the world.

Mixing, sound design, and original music by Casey Holford and John DeLore. Our editor is Peter Clowney.

The executive producers at Stitcher are Chris Bannon, Laura Mayer and Jenny Radelet.

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2. Donald and Ivana's Affair (with Pizza Hut)

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