Category: Articles

Apr

News: Fleeing Romania to being an Oscar nominee: Why Sebastian Stan is truly a star

Sebastian Stan’s journey to Hollywood isn’t your typical success story. He didn’t grow up in Los Angeles or come from a family in the business. Instead, his story starts in Romania – under a strict government, in a country still dealing with the impact of Communism. From there, he made his way to the United States, built a career on taking risks, and became one of the unique and respected actors in the industry.

Sebastian’s early life was filled with uncertainty. His father, Constantin Stan, worked on cargo ships and secretly helped people escape from Romania, where the government kept a tight grip on its citizens. “He was a bit of a hero in my town,” Sebastian told Vanity Fair in a recent interview. “My parents were part of the youth that were standing up to Communism. My father was helping people escape the country illegally, to the point where he was a wanted man. And he himself had to flee.”

Eventually, his father disappeared completely, going into exile in the United States. Sebastian stayed behind with his mother, Georgeta Orlovschi, a pianist. She first fled to Vienna to get settled, then brought Sebastian to join her. Not long after, they moved to the US to start over.

Even after all these years, Romania is still a big part of who Sebastian is. Growing up under a harsh government taught him to be aware of power and how it can be misused – something he still thinks about today in his life in America. He also understands the immigrant experience in a personal way. “I have always made the argument that immigrants, to some extent, are more patriotic than even the people that are born here because they don’t take things for granted,” he said in his Vanity Fair interview.

Sebastian’s acting career didn’t take off right away. He didn’t fit the usual Hollywood image, but that worked in his favour. He started taking on roles that were a little different – more complex, darker, and sometimes even a bit strange. From Bucky Barnes in the ‘Captain America’ films, to his performances in ‘I, Tonya’, ‘Pam and Tommy’, and ‘Fresh’, he’s always chosen characters that are interesting and unexpected.

In 2024, he gave the people two big films – ‘A Different Man’ and ‘The Apprentice’. For the first film, he received a Golden Globe for Best Actor. For the second one, he became an Oscar-nominated actor.

After years of hard work and quietly building an impressive career, Sebastian is finally getting the attention he deserves. In 2025, he was honoured at the Golden Globes, a moment that felt long overdue for fans and critics alike.

For a long time, Sebastian Stan was best known as Bucky Barnes – the Winter Soldier – in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). His work across the ‘Captain America’ films and beyond earned him a loyal fan base, but let’s be honest: most of the spotlight was on Chris Evans as Captain America. And fair enough – Evans nailed that role and became the face of a franchise.

But that often meant Stan didn’t get quite the credit he deserved. His version of Bucky was intense, emotional, and complex – a man struggling with trauma, guilt, and identity. It wasn’t just a supporting role; it was a masterclass in subtle, layered acting.

And outside of Marvel? Stan’s really shown what he’s capable of. He’s taken on a wide range of roles, proving he’s not just a superhero sidekick but a seriously talented lead. In ‘I, Tonya’, he transformed into Jeff Gillooly with both awkwardness and edge. In ‘Pam and Tommy’, he completely disappeared into the role of Tommy Lee. Then there’s the twisted charm of ‘Fresh’, the creepy intensity of ‘The Devil All the Time’, and the quiet mystery of ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’.

He’s also not afraid to take risks. Whether he’s playing a real-life figure like Donald Trump in ‘The Apprentice’, or diving into dark, psychologically challenging roles, Stan always brings a level of depth and commitment that makes you sit up and pay attention.

Sebastian Stan didn’t follow the traditional path to stardom. He carved out his own path, breaking through cultural and industry expectations along the way. His story is a powerful reminder that where you start doesn’t have to define where you end up – and that being different can be your biggest strength.

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Published by Samantha

Published on Apr 28, 2025

Apr

News: ‘Thunderbolts’: Sebastian Stan and Wyatt Russell Talk Marvel’s Most Unexpected Story and Wanting to Disprove Naysayers

The Hollywood Reporter

Russell says his background in sports fueled his desire for the movie to be so good that it proves doubters wrong: “I want to make you eat your words.”

There’s a scene in Jake Schreier’s Thunderbolts* where Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes ruins an illusion that Wyatt Russell’s John Walker has been trying to uphold. Walker proceeds to give such a vulnerable look to Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova that you might find yourself reevaluating how you feel about the disgraced former Captain America from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Disney+ series. It’s one of the many unexpected moments in, arguably, Marvel Studios’ most unexpected superhero tale to date.

Stan and Russell recently sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss some of the other unanticipated components of the film, starting with Congressman Barnes, something that was first set up in Captain America: Brave New World. Bucky visited the new Captain America, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), at a moment when he needed his friend most, and the then-former Winter Soldier had to cut their reunion short due to a “stupid” campaign fundraiser.

Well, Thunderbolts* picks back up with Bucky now elected and known as Congressman Barnes, and Stan likens his role to a retired athlete who is brought back by their most tenured team to serve as an ambassador. They don’t have a major impact on the team’s day-to-day, but it makes fans feel good to see their past icons hanging around still. However, as Thunderbolts’ marketing campaign reveals in the form of Stan’s homage to Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Bucky can only put the (non-brainwashed) Winter Soldier on ice for so long.

“He’s also had his own suspicions about [Julia Louis-Dreyfus’] Valentina, so I think [congress] is his way of trying to, in the legal and moral way, keep track of her. And then he realizes, ‘I can just do this in my way, the way that I’ve always done it [as The Winter Soldier],’” Stans tells THR in support of Thunderbolts’ May 2 theatrical release.

In December 2023, Russell teased to THR that Thunderbolts* would not be your tried-and-true Marvel superhero film, and it’s now come to light that the film is genuinely about mental health. Louis-Dreyfus’ CIA director, Valentine Allegra de Fontaine, has positioned a number of MCU loners and rejects — such as Yelena, Walker, Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) and newcomer “Bob” (Lewis Pullman) — to kill each other for her own nefarious reasons. But they instead decide to team up in response to the obvious setup.

Along the way, each antihero is forced to confront the most unpleasant corners of their mind, and Russell, as a former accomplished hockey player, was eager to disprove anyone who wrote Thunderbolts* off as just another superhero team-up.

“We came to this as a group of people who were like, ‘Let’s make this our own thing, let’s make it great and let’s make people put their foot in their mouths,’” Russell says. “I have a little bit of an athletic background, so I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to make you eat your words if you’re like, “This movie’s going to blow, I don’t want to go see it.”’”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Stan and Russell also discuss the highly collaborative nature of the Thunderbolts set.
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Published by Samantha

Published on Apr 28, 2025

Articles Interviews Photos Press

Apr

Photo/News: How Sebastian Stan Survived Communism and Became Hollywood’s Most Daring Shape-Shifter

Vanity Fair

For photos from this interview click here: Session #61 – Norman Jean Roy

This windblown Monday in late February would have been his late father’s 70th birthday, and before the day is gone, he is determined to light a candle and say a prayer in the old man’s memory at a place that had meaning for them both. Stan was born and raised in Romania, where faith and superstition became rooted together for him. “Whenever I’m in a church, I have to go like this three times,” he says, making the sign of the cross with his right hand. “I have to do it. And I have to do it three times before I get on a plane.”
Just before we arrived at this Southern California church in pursuit of the sacred, Stan was indulging the profane. Is there another way to describe an encounter with a remote-controlled talking penis? The actor is based in New York, so when he visits LA, as he’s doing now to attend the Academy Awards, he has a full to-do list. Today, that includes a visit to the makeup studio Autonomous FX, which won an Emmy for transforming Stan and Lily James into Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson for the Hulu series Pam & Tommy. The whole day is a microcosm of what has established Stan as one of the more daring and endearing actors working today. He thinks deeply but has a wild side too.

We’ll get back to the robo-penis later.

It’s getting late, and Stan has to hurry through rush-hour traffic to get right with God for his father’s birthday. The Biserica Ortodox? Român? Sfânta Treime (or Holy Trinity Romanian Orthodox Church) that he wants to visit to light the tribute to his father is meaningful to the Romanian immigrants who founded it, but it’s no soaring cathedral. It’s tiny, a single-story white stucco structure with a squat steeple that’s hidden behind much taller trees. Across the street is the headquarters of the Bilt-Well Roofing company, which is a comparatively much bigger operation.
Stan left Romania more than three decades ago, but it’s still a core part of him. So is the uncertainty of growing up in a place where the government dominated and demoralized its own citizens—which makes him especially attuned to authoritarianism in his adopted country of the United States. His old accent is gone, of course. Few who have seen him onscreen as the Winter Soldier in a decade and a half of Marvel movies—including the upcoming outcast team-up adventure Thunderbolts*—could find a trace of it. Stan’s character of Bucky Barnes is as all-American as his closest friend, Captain America. The character was a Brooklyn native, but Stan took on a neighboring Queens inflection for another famous (or infamous) performance, playing young Donald Trump in the scathing true-life drama The Apprentice. The role earned him both a best-actor Oscar nomination this year and the enduring rage of a vengeful, unchecked president.

New faces and new voices were exactly what drew Stan to acting in high school. He moved to the US in the 1990s, and—as an immigrant kid still struggling to adapt to the language and culture—it was a lot more fun to be Bum Number Two in a production of Little Shop of Horrors than it was to be himself. “I just remember how fun it was to try to change everything,” he says.

Being onstage turned a shy kid into a scene-stealing extrovert— and he was good at it. His mother sent him to summer theater camp not far from their new home just outside New York City, and by the end of high school, he was being cast as the lead in Cyrano de Bergerac. He was a good-looking kid, but he still loved hiding his face beneath Cyrano’s oversized nose. “You’re dress ing up, you’re putting on fake beards, you’re walking differently, you’re changing,” he tells me. “You take big swings. You take bigger swings than you do when you’re a young actor coming to LA to go on pilot season auditions and they try to cast you as yourself—and you’re only allowed to play yourself.”

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Published by Samantha

Published on Apr 21, 2025

Articles Blurbs Buring Rainbow Farm Film Press Projects

Apr

News: How Jacob Elordi Physically Transformed for Justin Kurzel’s Piercing War Story ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’

Indiewire

While Kurzel said he is no longer associated with the Laura Dern and Benedict Cumberbatch sci-fi drama “Morning,” he is about to begin production on another adaptation. Kurzel has replaced “Room” director Lenny Abrahamson to helm Cory Finley’s adaptation of “Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went Up in Smoke,” journalist Dean Kuipers’ account of a five-day standoff between marijuana advocates and the FBI. As an indication of the regard in which he is held by actors, Kurzel was brought onto the project by its star Sebastian Stan, a gesture that speaks to the collaborative spirit he fosters on set.

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Published by Samantha

Published on Apr 17, 2025

A River's Gaze Articles Interviews Press

Apr

News: How Sebastian Stan Finally Brought Hollywood to His Homeland With Romanian Festival Hopeful ‘A River’s Gaze’

Variety

It’s hard to imagine Sebastian Stan fighting for any part in Hollywood.

The Academy Award nominee has proven he’s as bankable in high-brow indies like “The Apprentice” and “A Different Man” as he is in soaring commercial fare like his continuing role as Marvel’s Bucky Barnes (next appearing in “Thunderbolts”).

But a cinematic homecoming that has eluded him over his career. Born in Constan?a, Romania, Stan has been trying to find a way to bring his day job back to his birth country and highlight talent in the region. Stan told Variety that’s been looking for the right Romanian script to act in for the for the better part of 15 years. Now, he’s found a way to represent behind the camera as a producer on “A River’s Gaze,” a Romanian-set drama from director Andreea Bortun.

It’s a story close to his own upbringing, Stan says. His single mom Georgeta raised him across multiple countries while forging her own artistic and academic path. Bortun, whose work is a blend of anthropology and visual art, has sent successful shorts to festivals like Cannes (where her collaboration with Stan has submitted for inclusion this year).

“A River’s Gaze” tells the story of Lavinia, a single mom herself whose ambitions of a better life for her 14-year-old son often eclipse his urgent emotional needs in the moment. Told over four seasons in rural Romania, Stan and Bortun caught up with Variety to discuss the artistic trip home.

Sebastian, how did you attach as a producer to this project?

Sebastian Stan: This came from a lot of conversations I’ve had with her over the years about my desire to be more involved with Romania creatively. A mutual friend who we both admire and respect spoke highly of Andrea and sent me her short, which had gone to Cannes. I was immediately blown away. I’ve wanted to act in a Romanian film for a very long time. I’ve tried and it hasn’t come about, but I realized that I can also help behind the camera. Andrea’s script spoke to me personally. At the center is this very specific, intimate relationship between a mother and a son growing up in Romania under particular conditions, which I feel are not always reflected much to the rest of the world. I had my own journey with my mom growing up there and leaving the country. I felt there were things about it that really rang true to me, and that was great, because it only incentivized me to want to be involved further in helping her craft this vision.
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Published by Samantha

Published on Apr 04, 2025

Articles Blurbs Photos Press Videos

Mar

News/Photo: Hollywood’s Top 25 Power Stylists 2025

The Hollywood Reporter

Note: Photoshoot photos including Michael’s instagram photos are here: Session #161 – Nino Muñoz

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by MICHAEL FISHER (@mjonf)

Michael Fisher

CLIENTS Sebastian Stan, John Mulaney, Bowen Yang, David Harbour

WHY HE MATTERS For the press tour of The Apprentice, Stan and Fisher steered clear of his onscreen persona’s power-shouldered suits in favor of such modern interpretations as shrunken Thom Browne and smartly tailored Prada suits and Dolce & Gabbana pinstripes. “Michael’s a movie buff. He watches the films and has a point of view. He’s conscious of who he’s working with: the person’s tastes, characteristics, what kind of actor they are. He’s sensitive to the themes being promoted,” says Stan of Fisher, with whom he first teamed in 2018.

TOP LOOK Fisher is partial to the contrasting piped black Prada mohair coat and trousers that the Different Man Golden Globe winner wore to the ceremony. “Custom looks are always stressful because you don’t really know how it will turn out or how your talent will feel once they try it on,” says Fisher, who has a history with the luxury Italian house. “Instinct told me that the final result would be perfect for the win.” Adds Stan: “There was something timeless and old Hollywood about it that I loved. … I also think I probably always love everything that’s in black. If it was up to me, I would always just be dressing in black.”

Photographed on Feb. 26 at the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood. On Stan: Prada coat, sweater, tee, pants; Cartier watch, jewelry; Steve Madden shoes. On Fisher: Prada clothing; Cartier watch, jewelry. Groomer: KC Fee at Redefine Representation Artistic and Fashion Director Alison Edmond Photographed by Nino Muñoz

“I sought him out,” says Stan (right) of Fisher. “I really loved that at the time he was working with some of my favorite actors, like Michael Shannon, Ethan Hawke and Adam Driver. It seemed that everything on those guys was effortless and felt connected to who they were and their personalities.” Adds Fisher, “Sebastian’s passion, generosity and sense of adventure always make my job easy.”

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Published by Samantha

Published on Mar 06, 2025

A Different Man Articles Interviews Media Photos Press The Apprentice Videos

Feb

News/Photo/Video: A Turn as Trump Made Sebastian Stan an Unlikely Oscar Nominee | New York Times

New York Times – He is attracting different attention, and some leading man hardware, after standout performances in “The Apprentice” and “A Different Man.”

For accompanying photo: Session #157 – Caroline Tompkins.

For the accompanying video clip click here.

For the screencaps of the video clip click here

For years, it seemed fair to assume that the actor Sebastian Stan could make a career on both sides of Hollywood. There was dabbling in juicy supporting roles — he played the ex-husbands of both Tonya Harding and Pamela Anderson — while comfortably returning to the action-hero part for which he is best known: Bucky Barnes. As the erstwhile sidekick of Captain America, Stan has been a regular in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies since 2011 (including “Thunderbolts*,” which hits theaters in May). There are surely worse fates than simply maintaining that balance.

“There’s a group of actors — I’ll put Colin Farrell in this group as well — that are so handsome that in some sense it works against them,” said Jessica Chastain, Stan’s friend and castmate in “The Martian” and “The 355.”

While being too good-looking a movie star may be world’s-smallest-violin territory, a whirlwind year with two standout unconventional performances now has the 42-year-old cast in a very different light. It has also already brought in some leading-man hardware, with more maybe to come.

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Published by Samantha

Published on Feb 12, 2025

A Different Man Articles Press

Feb

News: ‘A Different Man’ Makeup Designer Mike Marino On The Prosthetic Stages Of Sebastian Stan’s “Metamorphosis”

Deadline

When makeup designer Mike Marino signed on to do the prosthetics for A Different Man, he was taken in by the story’s ability to shine a comedic light on a dark subject. Writer-director Aaron Schimberg’s take on someone’s obsession of self then led Marino to an Oscar nomination for his prosthetic designs.

A Different Man follows Edward (Sebastian Stan), an aspiring actor, who undergoes a medical procedure to drastically change his appearance. When his new face gets in the way of the role he was born to play, he becomes obsessed with reclaiming what was lost. Marino looked to Adam Pearson for inspiration on what Edward’s initial prosthetics should look like, since the actors had to be playing off of each other, though Marino’s real craftsmanship came in the form of the “treatment stages” prosthetics.

DEADLINE: What was your inspiration for Edward’s prosthetics?

MIKE MARINO: The actual direct inspiration was Adam Pearson. Due to what we needed to do through the film, we had to have Sebastian look close to Adam Pearson, but a bit different. He was really the main influence with the design of the makeup because they’re playing against each other, so it wouldn’t really make sense if it looked completely different. It had to have the same feeling. So, I used Sebastian’s face to do what I could with his own face and his proportions, and mix them with Adam Pearson’s in a sense, but I had to actually make it a little bit more dramatic because his face is like Edward’s face in the film. Sebastian’s character is going through this kind of metamorphosis where he’s getting scabs and these pieces are peeling off of his face. So, it had to be altered from Adam Pearson’s face, which is not going through any of that stuff. Throughout the film, his face is getting scabby and lumpy and all these other things happening, and then he’s peeling pieces of it off, and then he ultimately peels his entire face off.

DEADLINE: Tell me about the stages of the prosthetics.

MARINO: So, there’s a few stages. His initial look is its own look in itself, and then when he starts going to treatments, he starts getting scabs and little pieces of things that are more intensified and flakier. And then you have this extremely soft version where his face almost looks like it’s melting off, which is the scene where he peels his face off and underneath is another stage of makeup. It’s a transitionary state between Edward’s final look as Guy, which he changes his name to, and Edward’s look. When he peels that off, underneath is another makeup he’s wearing that’s slightly distorting his facial features. If you look closely, you can kind of see remnants of the shape of what that character looks like. And then ultimately the next scene, he’s Sebastian Stan. He’s the new character.

That’s about four stages, and it was hard to make the very soft one. We barely could even take it out of our molds because it was just so pliable and so soft that it was barely holding its shape. And I had to do the makeup of his transitionary stage first and then glue with a very sticky gel, a very sticky material called Methylcellulose, which is basically a concentrated jelly donut filling. I had to glue the makeup on with that material so that it would kind of slough off and just peel and drip off. So then when he stretches it, it’s all this really stretchy cocoon-like shell going on. So that was definitely a tricky thing to even pull off.

DEADLINE: And what is that last prosthetic itself made out of? Is it a different material from the others that makes it so soft and difficult to work with?

MARINO: It’s all the same material. It’s just varied in density of silicone. There’re ways to vary the softness of things. Like for instance, on The Penguin, I made certain aspects of that makeup harder, like the nose. And there were aspects of Colin [Farrell]’s face, like the neck, which I made extremely soft because it’s such a mobile area. Same with this, there’s a couple of soft spots of Edward’s character, and then when he’s peeling his face off, it’s a much, much softer version of the same material. We can make it more liquid and do different things chemically to make it very pliable, but it’s all platinum, medical-grade silicone.

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Published by Samantha

Published on Feb 11, 2025

Appearances Articles Press

Feb

News: Fernanda Torres and Sebastian Stan Join Ariana Grande, Karla Sofía Gascón, and More at Santa Barbara Tribute — Exclusive

Indiewire

Under executive director Roger Durling, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF, February 4-15, 2025) has thrived by not only mounting an eclectic film festival but riding the awards season waves by programming prestige interviews with Oscar contenders.

All the festival’s popular panels are held at State Street’s capacious Arlington Theatre. The festival is adding two new tributees, Oscar nominees Fernanda Torres (“I’m Still Here”) and Sebastian Stan (“The Apprentice”), to TCM host Dave Karger’s popular Virtuosos tribute on Sunday, February 9 at 8 p.m.

They will join panelists Karla Sofía Gascón and Selena Gomez (“Emilia Pérez”), Harris Dickinson (“Babygirl”), Ariana Grande (“Wicked”), Clarence Maclin (“Sing Sing”), Mikey Madison (“Anora”), and John Magaro (“September 5”). The festival may not have foreseen that Torres might be rubbing shoulders with rival Oscar nominee Gascón in the wake of her recent scandal. Netflix may opt not to send Gascón. (Netflix had no response at press time.)

Every year, screenwriters, directors, and producers promote their films on panels, with past speakers like Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Kristen Stewart, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Nolan, Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt, Bong Joon Ho, and more submitting to in-depth tributes.

The panels, tributes, and special screenings lure not only local cinephiles but the area’s few hundred Academy members eager to hear Oscar contenders talk about their creative process. Most of the tributes and panels are held in person at the historic Arlington Theatre, and they’re posted online.

SBIFF 2025, the 40th edition, will open with the U.S. premiere of “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” and will unspool 12 days of film programming from 60 countries, including 32 world premieres such as Maxim Derevianko’s “Ai Weiwei’s Turandot,” as well as red-carpet tributes to filmmakers and talent including Colman Domingo, Angelina Jolie, Ralph Fiennes, Zoe Saldaña, Timothée Chalamet, Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce. The closing night film is the U.S. premiere of “A Missing Part.” Tickets are available here.

I will return to moderate The Writers Panel on Saturday, February 8 at 11 a.m. The Oscar nominees include “The Brutalist” co-screenwriter Mona Fastvold, Golden Globe-winning screenwriter Peter Straughan (“Conclave”), “Nickel Boys” co-screenwriter Joslyn Barnes, “A Real Pain” writer Jesse Eisenberg, “September 5” writer Tim Fehlbaum, and “Sing Sing” co-screenwriter Clint Bentley, whose “Train Dreams” just premiered to kudos at Sundance.

The Animation Panel moderated by Durling will take place on February 5 at 5 p.m. with creators Gints Zilbalodis (“Flow”), Kelsey Mann (“Inside Out 2”), Nick Park (“Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl”), and Chris Sanders (“The Wild Robot”).

The International Features Panel moderated by Durling will convene on February 9 at 11:00 a.m. with Zilbalodis (“Flow”), writer-director Jacques Audiard (“Emilia Pérez”), writer-director Walter Salles (“I’m Still Here”), and Mohammad Rasoulof (“The Seed of the Sacred Fig”).

The Producers Panel moderated by Nicole Sperling (The New York Times) will meet on February 10 at 5:00 p.m. with producers of Oscar-nominated films including “Anora,” (Alex Coco), “The Brutalist” (Brian Young), “A Complete Unknown” (Alex Heineman) and “Dune: Part 2” (Cale Boyter).

The Women’s Panel starts on February 15 at 11:00 a.m. PT, moderated by Madelyn Hammond. Oscar nominees include Smriti Mundhra, director of documentary short “I Am Ready, Warden,” Victoria Warmerdam, writer-director of live-action short “I’m Not A Robot,” Paula DuPré Pesmen, producer of documentary feature “Porcelain War, ” Emily Kassie co-director of documentary feature “Sugarcane,” and Diane Warren, veteran songwriter of Tyler Perry’s “The Six Triple Eight.”

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Published by Samantha

Published on Feb 07, 2025

Articles The Apprentice

Feb

News: Want to Perfect Your Trump Impression? Just Ask Sebastian Stan’s Dialect Coach

Vanity Fair

It’s the noise living in all of our heads—when we turn on the news, scroll through Elon Musk’s X, or listen to any number of podcasts. Donald Trump’s voice even forced its way into awards season with The Apprentice, which fictionalizes the president’s ascent in the New York City real estate scene in the 1970s and ’80s. Despite a long and difficult battle for distribution, the film earned a pair of Oscar nominations: one for Sebastian Stan’s lead performance as Trump, and the other for Jeremy Strong’s supporting turn as his shadowy mentor, Roy Cohn.

Stan’s performance is made not just by his sideswept blonde wig and perpetually pouted lips, but his total mastery of Trump’s idiosyncratic diction. For that, we can thank dialect coach Liz Himelstein, who has devoted her life to helping performers find characters through accent. That means phonetically breaking down dialogue—every vowel, diphthong, and consonant change—in addition to giving her high-profile clients primary source material they can study.

The key to Stan’s transformation turned out to be Trump’s 1980 conversation with gossip columnist Rona Barrett. “In that interview, we found so much of him,” Himelstein tells Vanity Fair, speaking in the soothing, perfectly enunciated tone one would expect from a person who teaches accents for a living. “It was a treasure trove of sounds and cadence, and also [Trump] being 34 years old, his younger voice.”
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Published by Samantha

Published on Feb 07, 2025