NEW YORK (AP) — Even in an election year, most people seem to agree on one aspect of Ali Abbasi’s much-discussed Donald Trump film “The Apprentice”: Sebastian Stan is a remarkably good Trump and Jeremy Strong is frighteningly compelling as New York Energy broker Roy Cohn.
One reviewer recently wrote that Strong’s portrayal of Cohn was “uncanny in its accuracy.” The critic? Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone.
“The Apprentice” has been plagued by controversy since its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May, after which the Trump campaign promised legal action. The makers had to fight for a theatrical release, which opens on Thursday, just weeks before the election. The Trump campaign called it “election interference by Hollywood elites.”
“We’re completely on edge,” Strong says.
The film, about Cohn’s mentorship of a newborn Trump in the greed-is-good 1980s, is a dramatic election-year provocation. It’s the origin story of the Republican nominee, starting with Cohn, the ruthless lawyer whose tactics of denial, denial, denial made him a sought-after Mafia mastermind, chief adviser to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunt, and a guru for Trump tried to make a name for himself in the New York real estate industry.
“His disregard for reality and his denial of reality are, to me, the hallmarks of what he taught his star student,” Strong says, noting that Cohn’s boat was named Defiance. “It is a legacy of mendacity, lies, denial and the aggressive pursuit of victory as the only moral standard.”
“The Apprentice,” directed by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Abbasi and written by Gabriel Sherman, focuses on the Cohn-Trump relationship, giving Strong and Stan two of the best roles of their careers. Strong calls Cohn “probably the most fascinating person I have ever studied, interviewed and immersed myself in.”
For two much-lauded characters, the performances are unusually humanistic. Cohn has a prosperous history of portrayals, including Al Pacino in Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.” But Strong’s Cohn is uniquely genuine and camp-free. Trump, of course, has largely been portrayed with “Saturday Night Live”-style parodies. But Stan’s Trump is an unabashed nerd who is eager to be molded by Cohn, says Abbasi: “I still don’t know exactly how he did it.”
“For him, there’s a special kind of risk-taking,” Abbasi says of Stan. “He has a different career path with the superhero stuff. But Sebastian, on the other hand, has always been someone who takes gigantic risks. He humanized a lot of idiots and scumbags – people you wouldn’t want to be. But when you see Sebastian play them, you kind of think, ‘Maybe he’s not so bad.'”
“A crazy mountain to climb” for portraying Trump on “The Apprentice”
Most of the actors wanted nothing to do with the role of Trump. But Stan signed up and stayed with the production for several years.
“I went along,” says Stan. “And it was also a challenge because it wasn’t a film that came together easily. It’s a film I’ve known for some time. I first met Ali in 2019.”
“Of course it felt risky,” he adds. “But to be honest, that played a part in the decision to some extent. It plays more of a role in the new approach to things I’ve taken. For me it started about five years ago. I really started to look at fear as a motivating factor, which might be the right sign that I need to commit to something. It’s very easy to just keep doing things that you feel like you’ve gotten good at. Then something comes along and it feels like it’s a crazy mountain to climb.”
That could be doubly true for “The Apprentice,” a film that cobbled together financing and struggled to find distribution before Briarcliff Entertainment stepped in this fall. Sherman began writing it in 2017. He had covered the 2016 Trump campaign for New York Magazine and became aware when a Trump aide commented that Trump was using Cohn’s strategies.
“The idea came to me like a flash,” Sherman says. “This is the film. Donald was Roy’s apprentice. Let’s do an origin story, a mentor-protégé story about how that relationship put Donald on the path to becoming president.”
Trump, who first met Cohn in 1973 and remained close friends until Cohn’s death in 1986, has spoken of his admiration for him. “Roy was brutal, but he was a very loyal guy,” Trump told author Tim O’Brien. “He acted brutally for you.” Politico’s Michael Kruse detailed the relationship in 2016, writing, “Cohn’s philosophy shaped the real estate mogul’s worldview and the belligerent public persona evident in Trump’s presidential campaign.”
Further historical analyzes by Cohn are in preparation. Kai Bird, who wrote “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” on which Christopher Nolan’s film was based, is working on a biography of Cohn.
“Roy Cohn is posthumously suddenly one of the most influential people in our country because of what he conveyed to Donald Trump,” Strong said.
Finding “a reptilian pulse” to play Roy Cohn
Strong was first drawn to playing Cohn several years ago in a project that ultimately fell through. But it got Strong thinking about Cohn’s fascinating paradoxes. If finding a character means finding their pulse, Strong says, “In this case, it’s a kind of reptilian pulse.”
“In terms of a sociological and anthropological study, I think he’s an absolutely fascinating character,” Strong says. “My own judgment must be left at the door. But it was like looking into the heart of darkness.”
For the two actors, “The Apprentice” presented a particular challenge in balancing judgment and empathy. The film has provoked a spectrum of reactions. Abbasi claimed that Trump might not reject the film and invited him to watch it. (“It’s an open invitation,” Sherman says.) Others have criticized the film for offering a certain amount of sympathy to its main characters.
“The only way we can learn is through empathy,” Stan says. “We must protect and continue to promote empathy. And I think one way to encourage empathy is to show what the exact opposite can be.”
“(Cohn) didn’t believe in showing vulnerability,” Strong says. “He was all about radiating strength, and I find that very tragic.”
After four seasons of the HBO series “Succession,” which followed a fictional Rupert Murdoch in Logan Roy, Strong revisited the ruthless machinations of power in New York City.
“I can certainly draw a line between the two. “Rupert Murdoch is in the film at a party at Roy’s house on 68th Street, and Roy and Rupert did a lot of business together,” Strong says. “In some ways, I’m a Zelig when it comes to these issues and issues.”
Strong was famously pilloried for a 2021 New Yorker profile that chronicled his solemn approach to maintaining his role. But Abbasi was still rattled at times by Strong’s method. “There were days,” says the director, “when I thought, ‘Why isn’t he looking at me?’ Does he hate me?’ Oh, he has his character.”
Strong describes the transformation into Cohn as “self-erasure,” a process that requires him to enter “a state of monofocus” in order to “change the stamp of his nature.” But he also hesitates to emphasize his immersion too much.
“It’s all a game. It’s a game, so I don’t get lost in it,” Strong says. “I’m at the limits of the game, but I’m just committed to this game.”
Stan joked about his own method acting in a scene where constantly eating cheese balls resulted in a difficult morning on the toilet. Adopting Trump’s diet has harmed his health, he says. “I finished reading the movie and got my blood tests done and they said, ‘Your LDL levels are much higher, like 50% higher,'” Stan says with a laugh.
At the same time, Stan also drew on his own experiences. Like Abbasi, Stan, who grew up in Romania before coming to America, has a partially European view of Trump. He remembers coming to New York with his mother at the age of 12.
“She said to me, ‘This is where it happens. “This is where you become someone,” says Stan. “I really accepted that calmly. And I had a very love-hate relationship with this thing that she passed down to me.”
Widespread controversy surrounding ‘The Apprentice’
Ultimately, the creators of “The Apprentice” argue that all of drama’s tools play a critical role in providing a deeper understanding of even the most polarizing political figures.
“My rule of thumb is: If everyone is happy, something is wrong,” says Abbasi. “I’m not afraid of controversy. It’s not the place where I get my kicks. But I also knew that some of these things would follow. The kind of films I like, they have a temperament, like people. There are people who are nice, polite and neutral, but these are not the people you usually remember. People can be bad-tempered or rude and you remember them. I want to be one of those people remembered on film.”
Strong and Stan find themselves in the unlikely position of being scorned by the potential future president for a film for which they had to resort to Kickstarter funding. (The campaign has raised more than $400,000.) As much as they’re far from both, they’re both in the running for their first Oscar nominations.
“Do I think it will change people’s minds? I’m not sure,” Strong says. “Do I think it will assist someone watching this film develop a better understanding of the origins of our situation today? Yes, I do. And do I think it could move the needle infinitely in a direction that hopefully we’re moving in? I do.”
