Vanity Fair The actor is headed into the most exciting stretch of his career, between A Different Man and The Apprentice.
This article is also a podcast embedded below, you can read or listen (click more to read)
If Sebastian Stan made his name in Hollywood working in a certain handsome-leading-man register—whether as a suave fan favorite in the Marvel Cinematic Universe or a hot cannibal in the streaming hit Fresh—his work in two bold indie films this fall affirm that there’s more to him than meets the eye. In the opening act of Aaron Schimberg’s darkly funny A Different Man (in theaters via A24 on Friday), Stan is utterly unrecognizable, playing an aspiring actor living with neurofibromatosis until he undergoes an experimental facial reconstructive surgery that leaves him looking a lot like, well, Sebastian Stan. The movie launched in Sundance before screening in Berlin, where Stan won the Silver Bear for best lead performance.
A few months later at the Cannes Film Festival, The Apprentice premiered. In that energized film, directed by Ali Abbasi and written by Vanity Fair special contributor Gabriel Sherman, we find Stan portraying a young Donald Trump. Focused on Trump’s relationship with Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), the biopic finds Stan initially, subtly embodying the real estate mogul turned political lightning rod before he embraced the vocal tics, the catchphrases, and the unhinged braggadocio that have come to define him. It’s a smart, character-driven approach in which Stan gradually sheds any trace of himself. (After an extensive battle to secure a US distributor, the movie was acquired by Briarcliff Entertainment and will be released on October 11, just before the presidential election.)
This is the kind of thorny, challenging work that Stan has been hoping to do for years—but as he tells me for this week’s Little Gold Men interview (listen or read below), he found that his clean-cut image in Hollywood was preventing him from getting the chance. He got a taste of it when Craig Gillespie cast him in 2018’s I, Tonya, as Tonya Harding’s abusive ex-husband; he scored an Emmy nomination for his volatile turn as Tommy Lee in 2022’s Pam & Tommy. But anchoring two sure-to-be divisive movies with such daring performances feels like a turning point. Judging by our conversation, he’s prepared for any controversy to come. In fact, he seems to welcome it.
Vanity Fair: Let’s talk a little bit about the makeup chair and your transformation on A Different Man. From what I understand, you started that very early each day. Have you had an experience like that before, of a complete facial transformation?
Sebastian Stan: No, no. This was definitely the first time for me, certainly to this degree. And it really did affect everything else: my body, physicality, my perception of the world, the world’s perception of me walking around New York as Edward. Because we had such time constraints—not only with a very, very short shoot of 22 days, still during COVID in Manhattan, but also because our makeup artist was working two jobs at the same time—I got to get in the makeup chair earlier than our call time with him, and then I’d have four or five hours just to myself in the city where I would walk around before I get to set.
When you were walking around New York, how did people react?
Primarily in extremes. And by that I mean either someone would have an immediate reaction, maybe nudge their friend—and not in a very nonchalant way—or point or exclaim, like, “Oh, shit.” Or maybe take a picture. Or it would just be the opposite, completely ignoring that I was there. I remember waiting at a stop sign for the light to change. I was surrounded by people, and I was kind of slightly turning towards them, and they just would look forward as if I didn’t exist.
A Different Man is a metatext in many ways. It’s about how an actor wants to be seen. I’m curious if you connected to it along those lines.
The only thing I was drawing from in terms of my own life is the invasion of privacy that I experience on a daily basis—and not just me, but also people around me, like my family or even my dentist. When I was connecting with Aaron and Adam about how I’d try to understand this experience, that’s what they suggested to me: Looking at this idea of being public property. I understood that, because being filmed all the time or being written about all the time and certainly helpless towards that in a way, you just accept as being part of the decisions you’ve made. But it’s not necessarily something that you’re deserving of.
There’s this line in the movie: “Even though it’s not the right fit, is it wrong to cast someone because of their disfigurement, exploit it even? Will people come to gawk? Where’s the ethical line?” Since this movie is so in conversation with that question, both in the casting of you and Adam Pearson and in the story that it tells, what are your thoughts on those questions? Did they evolve while making the movie?
I really think it depends on the story and the character and what it’s asking for. Here we had a very specific situation of someone who has this reverse Vanilla Sky kind of arc. He starts off a certain way, he undergoes this thing, and then he supposedly looks like everyone else. That’s one of the things that I loved about the movie, that it was so complex in dealing with this particular issue. The overall goal is to further bring awareness to these questions, but also to get people to experience understanding toward a disabled or a disfigured person—what life in their shoes would be like. We have to thread that very carefully, but also remain somewhat open-minded in how we approach these things.
When A Different Man premiered in Sundance back in January, you’d told me that you’d been hoping to be considered more for this kind of movie. What did you mean by that?
I’ve been trying for a while to really get the attention of certain directors and get casting directors to see me differently. This might explain it: I had the pleasure of meeting Ben Stiller and having a really long conversation with him recently. And I remember I was trying out for a movie I wanted, that he was going to be in or he was directing at one point, and the feedback was, “Yeah, but when you walk in the room, it’s like, you’re this cool, confident, good looking guy!” And I’m like, “Oh, okay.”
I’ve been interested by a lot of things, and I have felt for a few years that it was hard for me to get chances toward it—playing characters that maybe you wouldn’t, by looking at me right off the bat or if you’re only familiar with my Marvel work, think I’m the guy for, so to speak. A big turning point was 2018 with I, Tonya, and Craig Gillespie and Margot Robbie really giving me a chance, casting me in a role that was against type. That experience fueled my desire to continue that type of work, which is very director-oriented and a collaborative relationship that is also challenging and different and transformative.
When you were playing scenes as Edward looking like yourself, did it almost feel strange to suddenly be just you?
Yeah. I was having nightmares and panic attacks before we started shooting about this transition, because I said, “If we don’t get this right, I don’t know if anyone will stick around.” Fortunately, I was able to shoot a lot of Edward at the beginning of the shoot. And that time with the prosthetics walking around the city really informed a lot for me in terms of what I thought wasn’t going to change. I felt that there needed to be recognizable things about him, even in the second half of the film, when he changes how he looks, that people had to still identify. Even though Edward looks different, I think you’re still feeling Edward.
What was giving you nightmares about The Apprentice?
[Laughs] Well, it could have been the acid reflux from the food. It could have been, let’s see, any of the people that told me not to do it. It could have been all the gazillion different opinions that were or will be probably thrown my way. It was just a million things. Also, the shoot was incredibly difficult because it was very quick. We had only a certain window to shoot it in, and it was literally in the heart of winter in Toronto, which is negative five degrees, and limited daylight. And then again, I had two hours in the [makeup] chair in the morning and then another hour to get out of everything and then another hour to drive home at night. There were tremendous things to prepare for the next day, and then hurry up and get to bed and do it again. By the end, it was so isolating that it just all felt like one giant nightmare. Anyway, yeah, I think you get the point.
Who was telling you not to do it, and what was your response? Why did you want to do it?
I would go to dinner, or I would have a meeting with producers. Or I remember a casting director who I trusted who gave me one of my first jobs. And I would just ask. I’d go, “Hey, what do you think about a Trump movie? What do you think about me playing Trump?” Mostly there was a beat there before answering, but everybody pretty much was like, “No, you’re going to alienate half the country. Why do we need another Trump? Why do I need to see another two hours of this thing? And what about your safety?” It was always a gazillion things like that. I took everything under account. The movie kept starting and then falling apart. I said, “If it falls apart, then so be it—then It’s not meant to happen and I’m not meant to do this. But it’s not…going to not happen for me because I’m too scared, or because someone is telling me I can’t do it or I don’t look like him.” It just went against the integrity of what I seek from the work, which also includes trying to be a part of the conversation that reflects the world that we’re in.
You introduce Trump as a human being and allow the film to tell the story on its own terms. Can you talk about figuring him out as a character within the confines of the film’s story?
The point of the film here was to try to see how things began, and steer far away from anything that would fall into caricature. He didn’t sound like he does today back then; even the way he spoke is very different. If you look at that [1980] interview with Rona Barrett or you look at him on Oprah in the eighties, when he started to finally talk about the foreign policy—he speaks very quickly, very passionately, very eloquently, persuasively even—well thought-out, running sentences, much more complete thoughts than what you saw the other night [at the presidential debate]. That’s kind of what my job is as an actor, in order to understand [my part in] the story. I watched every single impression I could find on YouTube from SNL, every impersonator I could find on Instagram—whatever, wherever I could find, just to see what exactly was out there on him, and perhaps even know what not to do.
A guide to Hollywood’s biggest races
Part of it was a little bit more technical in the sense of learning an instrument or a piece of music. You sit down and you practice it. This is the osmosis process of watching and listening 24/7. I started doing that in the morning, brushing my teeth and driving in the car. And literally even when I’m at dinner, sometimes I would slip a headphone in. You’re doing that every day, and you’re practicing it more and more. You start out slowly, and then eventually you can do it in your sleep.
It’s a tricky balance to even sell this movie, right? There’s the question of alienating half the country, because the film does eventually depict him doing some pretty bad things. But then you also have the other half of that audience who is asking themselves, “Why would I want to spend more time thinking about Trump?” How do you feel about doing this character study amid so many opinions coming in on either side?
It’s very hard, but here’s the thing: you can’t approach something like this with a result in mind. I sense this deep, deep need we all have for answers, because the world is so uncertain. We’re deeply in need of, “Tell me what to think. Tell me what to feel. Tell me what’s right, what’s wrong.” I’m asking that. My friends are. But we can’t always ask to be told what to think and what to feel. We actually have to make a choice to see what our actual opinion is.
We’ve gone to this place where it’s very bullying in terms of, “How dare you have a different opinion. How dare you disagree. How dare you try and see something differently.” Those feelings validate the importance of this film in a sense, because here we have a public figure that’s extremely consequential and so polarizing and so divisive—and instead of running out of that, we should be going in. We have to go into the storm and find out why it’s there to begin with. Why are people feeling so strongly against this man, and why are people loving this man so much?
It’s important to ask those questions. You hope that maybe you’re part of floating some new approach into the bloodstream of conversation that is not toxic or violent, but somehow more open-minded. And I don’t know if that’s possible. I think on a deep level, no matter what your political views are, I think we’re all human beings. I think we have an instinct to feel for one another or to be able to feel each other out. And we have to do everything to not drown that instinct.
In both of the films we’re talking about today, there’s a very strong undercurrent of comedy. You’re walking a razor-thin line between comedy and drama for very different reasons. But I’m curious how you think of these films as being funny. Why is that important to those stories and to your performances?
It’s funny. I’ve been thinking a lot about both movies, and I’m seeing weird, slight parallels I didn’t really think about. Comedy is a way to process difficult things—I think that’s one of the values of humor. It opens us up. These two movies, that’s what they both required. There was something very tragic and sad, and yet by nature, funny to Edward’s kind of turmoil. And at the same time, Trump is funny, or he was. I feel like even saying that is sort of—I don’t know. But there were many times he was on late night talk shows, and people were laughing a lot at what he said. I think trying to find the balance in both of these was very important for complex reasons. Humor, in an odd way, was part of both of these characters’ makeup.
You stopped yourself there when saying Trump was funny. Do you feel like you have to be especially careful in how you talk about this movie?
No. I think it’s just more about how you could speak about something for two hours, and someone will hear one thing. And that’s what they’ll take and they’ll run away with, and they’ll make up the rest without context. So by saying that, I certainly don’t want to be insensitive to very serious things that he’s said. His words often speak for themselves. But just simply from a character standpoint, there’s an element of humor to the bravado—or perhaps the confidence—that Ali and I together felt was essential to this particular telling.
This interview has been edited and condensed.