Category: Articles

Dec
09

News: Sebastian Stan Talks ‘The Apprentice’s Uphill Battle, Double Golden Globe Nomination, Lily James Reteam ‘Let The Evil Go West’ & Upcoming Cristian Mungiu & Justin Kurzel Projects

Deadline

On Monday, Sebastian Stan pulled off a rare feat, scoring Golden Globe nominations for Lead Actor in both Drama and Musical/Comedy categories. Following the announcement, Stan got candid about upcoming projects with Cristian Mungiu, Christian Tafdrup and Justin Kurzel, his experience on the awards circuit with his nominated turn as Donald Trump in The Apprentice, and more.

In discussing his upcoming slate, Stan seemed particularly excited about a project not yet announced with Cristian Mungiu, the Romanian filmmaker behind Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, which he expects to shoot next year.

“I was born in Romania. I still speak the language, and I’ve been trying to find a project where I can go back and tap back into that history that I have,” said the actor, “so I’m excited about working with him, and hopefully that’s going to come together.”

A second project on the docket is Let the Evil Go West, a horror thriller from buzzy Danish filmmaker Christian Tafdrup, which reunites him with Pam & Tommy‘s Lily James. The film centers on a railroad worker driven to madness after coming upon a fortune, and his wife, who believes an evil presence has attached itself to their family.

Stan came to the project after seeing Tafdrup’s “unbelievable” horror thriller Speak No Evil, which Universal just remade. “This is a project that’s been going on for a while, and it always gets tricky. It’s about finding the right scheduling and the right time to do it,” said the actor. “But that’s something I’m really excited about.”

While he didn’t get into details, Stan also confirmed that he’s attached to star in Burning Rainbow Farm, a film that The Order‘s Justin Kurzel has in development. Plot details are unconfirmed, but we hear it’s inspired by true events, involving two marijuana advocates who face off against the FBI in a tense five-day standoff in Michigan, culminating in tragedy just days before 9/11.

Stan’s Globe nominations this morning came for Briarcliff’s The Apprentice, which examines Trump’s rise in the 1970s and 1980s New York real estate scene, as well as A24’s A Different Man. Hailing from filmmaker Aaron Schimberg, that title has him playing a man with a disfigurement who undergoes an experimental facial reconstruction surgery, before spiraling into a psychological crisis.

RELATED: Hollywood A-Listers Afraid Of Donald Trump’s Wrath Over ‘The Apprentice’, Sebastian Stan Says

“Stunned and incredibly ecstatic,” Stan shared that the nominations are gratifying given the risks he took with each project and the uphill battles faced with each — The Apprentice, in particular, which struggled to secure financing, and later, distribution, amid the threat of a lawsuit from Trump himself. The project is one Hollywood didn’t seem to know what to do with, both leading up to and in the aftermath of a polarizing, pivotal election.

Sharing that he had “extreme trepidations” about playing Trump — in part, because many in the industry advised him not to — Stan reflected this morning about a disclosure of his that went viral: that while he intended to appear on Variety’s video series Actors on Actors in support of The Apprentice, no actor would step up to talk with him about his project, presumably out of fear of saying the wrong thing.

“For me, the Variety thing was just unfortunately another example of the uphill battle that the movie had been facing since Cannes, that there was some hesitancy and some fear around it…But it wasn’t my intention to point a finger or blame anybody else,” Stan said. “It was just simply saying, ‘Hey, we should be mindful of things that feel fearful.’ Because as artists, we have to hold ourselves as sort of the ambassadors of the truth, in a way…Today, of course, is a big day, in terms of hopefully allowing people to feel like they have permission, to talk about this film, and look at the work and have a conversation about it.”

From Stan’s perspective, we as a society need “all kinds of movies” and “have to try to not ever discriminate against any movie,” even if it’s something as polarizing as The Apprentice. In terms of the current climate of fear among Hollywood stars, when it comes to addressing certain topics, Stan’s feeling is that “there’s always a conversation that we can have about the work and what goes into it.”

A recent speech on Stan’s mind, when it comes to this, is the one given by honoree Richard Curtis at the Governors Awards. “He went up there and said, ‘Look, I am grateful to be standing up here and be recognized this evening. Buts also, I want to say, we love good ideas and we love embracing good ideas, but we also have to follow through on the action of it, even when you get to the last one-yard line, trying to get past it,’” the actor recalls. “Because I know the intentions are always good, and I believe that movies can inspire. I think they can reveal things sometimes that we have a hard time maybe understanding or communicating about in day-to-day life.”

In reflecting on the bold and diverse resume he’s carved out over the last decade-plus, Stan gave credit to his “Marvel family” for being an “incredibly supportive,” consistent presence in his life over the last 15 years, which has allowed him to “go out there and find other projects that allow me to kind of change it up and challenge myself.”

This, he says, is what he wants more than anything. “I’ve always tried to find other actors to learn from and grow from, and I want to be part of something meaningful,” Stan says, “and maybe that’s just me getting older. You want the work to have meaning and to stand for something.”

It’s hard to come up with an example of another actor who has scored lead actor nominations in both Drama and Musical/Comedy in the same year. Leonardo DiCaprio won twice in 2007, for Blood Diamond and The Departed, but both of those noms were in Lead Actor Drama. More commonly, an actor nabs one nomination in Lead and one in Supporting — for example, Kate Winslet, who did so with Revolutionary Road (Lead) and The Reader (Supporting) in 2009, winning both. Winslet also scored a pair of Globe noms in 2012 for Mildred Pierce and Carnage, though both noms were in Lead categories. Interestingly, the actress is again in the running with a pair of projects this season — those being feature Lee and series The Regime.

Other examples of multiple nominees across Lead and Supporting categories in a single year include Al Pacino (Glengarry Glen Ross & Scent of a Woman, 1993) and Jamie Foxx (Collateral & Ray, 2005). This year’s Golden Globes are set to take place on January 5.

Dec
09

News: Sebastian Stan Is “Still Shaking” After Getting Two 2025 Golden Globe Nominations

Vanity Fair – On the heels of recognition for both The Apprentice and A Different Man, Stan speaks to Vanity Fair about his “surreal” journey to awards recognition, as well as being nominated in the same year as Pamela Anderson.

It’s not every day that an actor earns a Golden Globe nomination, much less two in the same morning. But Sebastian Stan joined the likes of Selena Gomez and Kate Winslet on Monday by getting dual 2025 Globe nominations. “It’s certainly surreal,” he tells Vanity Fair, adding he’s “still sort of shaking from it.”

Stan secured recognition for both his dramatic turn as Donald Trump in The Apprentice and his more comedic performance as a tormented aspiring actor named Edward in A Different Man. It is the first time that a male performer has pulled off double nominations in the lead acting categories since Ryan Gosling managed to do it back in 2012. “Listen, one of my favorite actors of all time,” Stan says. “I’d be very glad to be in that little stat with him.”

In the early hours of nomination morning, Stan was getting some shuteye—or, at least attempting to. “I actually woke up in the middle of the night at 4:00, and was like, Oh, okay, there’s an hour and a half. I fell asleep again, and then I got a call from my publicist,” he tells VF. Since then, “I’ve been sending a lot of pictures to my mom.”

Some excitement is to be expected, especially when considering what it took to get both of Stan’s nominated films to the screen. “I never would’ve dreamt that I was going to be going to the Globes with both of these films, I never would’ve dreamt that both of the films would’ve come out in the same year,” he says.

Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man sat in limbo for two years before debuting on the festival circuit this year. At the Sundance Film Festival, it was acquired by A24 for a fall release. The film then screened in Berlin, where Stan won the Silver Bear for best lead performance. Meanwhile, The Apprentice, directed by Ali Abbasi and written by Vanity Fair special contributor Gabriel Sherman, premiered at May’s Cannes Film Festival to positive reviews. But the film faced a treacherous road to distribution in the days before the 2024 presidential election.

“To even be in one room with both films is not something that’s ever crossed my mind,” Stan says. “So, I’ll be digesting that probably throughout the holiday season.” The recognition for each movie feels extra gratifying because “they both felt really challenging in terms of what the roles we’re requiring,” he says, “obviously one being one of the most famous people in the world, with a lot of people having very strong feelings about [him], and many, many impressions having been done. How do you go in there and find something new, or try to offer a different perspective?”

As it turns out, bringing a young Trump to life during the dawn of his fortuitous relationship with Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong, now Globe-nominated for best supporting actor in a feature film) was only half the fight. Stan recently opened up about the struggle to promote The Apprentice in the wake of Trump’s reelection, including having to pass on Variety’s Actors on Actors because other participants were reluctant to talk about the president-elect.

“The movie has had a really uphill battle since Cannes,” says Stan, who also recently nabbed an Independent Spirit Award nomination for the movie. “It’s been hard for people to have permission to express how they feel about the movie, and today feels very gratifying in terms of having the Golden Globes recognize the film, and the work. It feels like hopefully going forward people can feel okay talking about it, and see it.”

Stan earned his first Globes nomination for playing Tommy Lee in 2022’s similarly controversial based-on-a-true-story project, Pam & Tommy. How does he feel to be nominated in the same year as the real-life Pamela Anderson, who became a first-time nominee for The Last Showgirl? “I’m so happy for her, and [it’s] so well deserved. It’s a beautiful film and a beautiful performance,” says Stan. “From our end, this was always part of the goal and the intention [of the series]—to somehow shine a light where it hasn’t been shined before, and hopefully contribute in a way [to her success]. So yeah, I’m ecstatic for her.”

Stan is also rooting for many of his other fellow nominees. “My two favorite films of the year are Sing Sing and A Real Pain,” says the actor, who then praises one of his competitors in the musical/comedy lead actor race. “Jesse Eisenberg, I want to say congratulations to him because he’s somebody I worked with years ago, in 2006 [via Fred Durst’s feature directorial debut, The Education of Charlie Banks], and the man’s a genius. I love that movie so much.”

He also spotlights The Substance, a film that, along with a release date, also shares themes with A Different Man—more specifically, issues of transformation and fixation on physical appearance. “There were a lot of articles that kind of put us together, in terms of the themes of the movies,” says Stan. “But they’re unique in the sense that they are original. Sing Sing, A Real Pain, I should say Anora while I’m at it—to be able to have films that are standing on their own without any IP, or anything about them that we know but their true original film storytelling, is amazing.”

The Globes are seen as something of a precursor on the way to potential Oscar gold—but Stan isn’t getting ahead of himself. “The fact that we’re here today in itself is such a massive step, but it is very much a one-day-at-a-time experience,” says the 42-year-old. “As an actor in this community, besides the work that you do on the day, when you go home at night and feel like you’ve left it all on the field, there’s nothing more gratifying than the actual recognition of your peers. I’ve been doing this for 20-some odd years, and I’m pretty grateful. So, knock on wood, and whatever happens next happens—but we’ve already won in a major way.”

Nov
22

News: Sebastian Stan on playing Donald Trump in ‘The Apprentice’ and a disfigured actor in ‘A Different Man’: ‘The margin of error for me was very small’

Gold Derby

Sebastian Stan is receiving major awards buzz for two films this year. In Ali Abbasi‘s “The Apprentice,” he plays a young Donald Trump as he starts his real-estate business in 1970s and ’80s New York with the helping hand of infamous lawyer Roy M. Cohn (Jeremy Strong). In Aaron Schimberg‘s dark comedy “A Different Man,” Stan plays a disfigured aspiring actor who undergoes a radical medical procedure to transform his appearance. Stan chats with Gold Derby about both roles in the video interview above.

The actor says “fear” and his “lack of actual knowledge about this person” inspired him to take on the role of Trump. “Like everybody else, I’ve been inundated with a constant influx of information online, ‘SNL’ impressions, headlines, horrific soundbites of his, and I had maybe had my own ideas about the guy,” he explains. “I actually feel like I really didn’t know who he was, or how did he become what he became?”

“As an actor, you’re hoping to find projects that challenge you, but also truly ask very important, uncomfortable questions,” Stan says. “We’re talking about someone who has affected all of our lives. I felt there was a responsibility to really try to hold a mirror up to nature.” Stan likens his preparation for the role to “learning an instrument.” He had to master Trump’s mannerisms and speech, which were drastically different in the 1970s.

Stan reveals, “You study footage and listen to audio for hours on end. Basically it takes over your life. It takes a long time, and then eventually you can just do it in your sleep and not think about it. You want it to feel organic, and you want it to feel earned so it’s not something you’re conscious of. The caricature, the cartoon, the ‘SNL’ impression were always going to be a mountain to climb. Everyone’s got some back pocket impression of him…The margin of error for me was very small.”

The actor plays the real estate mogul and then-future president in the 1970s and 80s, and Stan explains how much Trump has changed since then. “He didn’t start out to be this character,” he says. “He’s actually been inventing himself every 10 years, arguably. It’s quite fascinating because people change, but we don’t all change that much or that drastically. He’s had very different points in his life that led him to this. The building of Trump Tower, Atlantic City was another point for him, and then really ‘The Apprentice,’ which is the version we’ve been living with. This character he’s learned pretty well and shaped in that show. For our purposes, when you go back in time, there was a guy that was really not that sure of himself.”

Stan plays another man with deep insecurities in “A Different Man.” His character, Edward, suffers from neurofibromatosis, a condition that causes tumors to grow on his face. “It was such a unique, different film,” he says. “Not just in terms of how unbelievably unpredictable the movie is. It’s funny, it’s tragic. It’s exciting for an actor and you actually feel surprised by the material.”

“There’s this underlying message of about identity and self-truth,” he continues. “Not just how it pertains to disability and disfigurement, and how we don’t really have a relationship with that at all. We are curious, but afraid to rely on our curiosity, and therefore we manage to walk away without any education or awareness about someone’s experience in those shoes. It really is about something we’re all facing now, which is, who am I? And who am I separately from how I look to other people?”

Stan stars with Adam Pearson, an actor who actually has neurofibromatosis. “It was a very tricky line to walk,” Stan says. “The prosthetics by Mike Marino were so great, that at times, people don’t even know if it’s me or him. It’s so cleverly and expertly woven together by Aaron, and it’s about what happens to this person that has denied himself for so long, and then when he thinks he gets this life he’s always wanted, he finds out that the cost he paid was his true self.”

Nov
01

News/Photoshoot: Sebastian Stan Shows His Range in New Films ‘The Apprentice’ and ‘A Different Man’

Los Angeles Magazine – The ‘Pam & Tommy’ star appears unrecognizable in two projects that prove he’s a master of transformation.

Note: For the accompanying photoshoot click here: Session #143 – Irvin Rivera

“I have these very vivid memories,” says 42-year-old actor Sebastian Stan of growing up in Romania during the 1989 revolution.

“One of them being this Dacia car, driving by with screaming people holding the flag. The flag had a hole in the middle, which they had cut out — [erasing] the communist symbol at the time. And then I remember being on my couch with my mom and my grandmother and neighbors, watching Ceausescu be shot.”

What propelled them was the “obsession” Eastern Europeans had with the American Dream. “All I ever heard about was America: the land of the free, the land of opportunity,” says Stan, who at 8, moved with his mother — a pianist, who named him after composer Johann Sebastian Bach — to Vienna before heading to the U.S.

“I remember coming to this country when I was 12 with my mom and seeing the big Twin Towers of New York City and feeling overwhelmed,” Stan says. “And my mom looking at me and saying: “Now you have a chance to become someone.”
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Oct
20

News: ‘Trump called us human scum this morning’: Apprentice stars Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan on being in the line of fire

Irish Times

“Trump wrote about the film this morning and called us human scum,” Jeremy Strong tells me. “Which is a term that was used by Stalin and by Hitler and by Kim Jong-un and by Bolsonaro. And I find it very troubling that a man who is running in the presidential election in the United States in 2024 is using that language.”

The Apprentice is no ordinary gig. Ali Abbasi’s movie stars Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump and Strong as Roy Cohn, notoriously ruthless lawyer, in a tale of the future president’s early days hustling real estate in New York City. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that Trump reacted as he did. But the language used this week did little to counter the film’s depiction of him as an oversensitive whiner.

“So sad that HUMAN SCUM, like the people involved in this hopefully unsuccessful enterprise, are allowed to say and do whatever they want in order to hurt a Political Movement,” Trump yelled on Truth Social.

“I was not surprised at all,” Stan says with a wry smile. “It’s quite childish and on par with his low self-esteem. It’s interesting for us to see it. Because it validates the film in a way. If there is nothing for him in the film to worry about – if it’s all lies, as he claims – then why even take the time to do it?”

Stan and Strong do a good job of seeming relaxed about it all. The former, an unclassifiable Romanian-born performer who has thrived in everything from awkward arthouse to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, reveals a chuckling delivery that lends itself to self-deprecation. Strong, who graduated from actors’ actor to offbeat star as Kendall Roy on the TV show Succession, has a reputation for intensity, but he couldn’t be more helpful and chatty this evening. Dressed in a rollneck jumper, his neat hair and neater beard peppery grey, he speaks in complete paragraphs that have a middle between their beginning and end.

“I don’t find it unpleasant. It doesn’t even upset me,” he says of Trump’s rant. “The thing that unsettles me is his use of that phrase and the historical context in which that phrase has been used.”

Its association with fascists?

“Human scum? It’s a specific phrase that has been used by fascist dictators in the 20th century.”

The Apprentice begins with Trump, an unglamorous nonentity, collecting rent from his father’s slums during the mid-1970s. He get a whiff of more glamorous destinations after meeting Cohn, surrounded by courtiers, in a suave restaurant, while Trump is dining pathetically alone. The attorney was already notorious. He helped prosecute Ethel and Julius Rosenberg as spies and sat beside Joseph McCarthy, the Republican senator, during the United States’s anti-communist witch hunts of the early 1950s. The film posits that he helped make Trump into the relentless force he is today. Cohn’s first rule is: “Attack, Attack, Attack!” That still feels like his protege’s mantra.

I suggest that you couldn’t make up these two men. A screenwriter, if starting from scratch, would allow them a sliver more shade. Right? Strong points me towards the heroes of John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy.

“If you look at Ratso Rizzo and Joe Buck it’s the same,” he says, before nodding to one of the great American acting teachers. “Stella Adler once said that you have to be as large as life. I think people in life are large. They can have outsize dimensions. These are sui-generis people. No one I’ve ever encountered or observed or studied is anything like Roy Cohn. He was bat-like, reptilian, gleeful, sun-tanned.”

These two actors have taken quite different routes to this place. Now 42, Stan arrived with his family to New York state when he was just 12 years old. In 1994, long before the MCU even existed, he had a small role in Michael Haneke’s film 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance. More smallish parts helped him gain a reputation before breaking through as Bucky Barnes in Captain America: The First Avenger. He was recently superb as a man whose life takes a wrong turn after transformative facial surgery in Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man.
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It strikes me that having both an outsider’s and an insider’s perspective on the United States could be useful when preparing a film such as The Apprentice.

“Maybe. I grew up in America, so I’m very Americanised,” Stan says. “But I do remember, as a kid, my mother communicating the blessing and the curse of being presented with the opportunity in this country to become something – to make something of myself. And while that has served me and driven me, it’s also plagued me to no end. Because I never feel I’ve done enough. Ever. That describes a lot of us in this country.”

The success of Succession turned Strong from one of the business’s best-kept secrets into a source of endless fascination. Born into a working-class Boston family, he idolised the method greats as a kid. He won a scholarship to Yale to study drama but ended up switching to English. Strong continued to act and spent spells at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, in London, and Steppenwolf Theatre Company, in Chicago.

They are in the English capital now. The Apprentice premieres at London Film Festival the night after we speak. As a Rada hand, Strong must feel a little at home.

“It would be false of me to claim that I was really at Rada,” he says. “I went there for a sort of training programme briefly when I was in college. This was a hallowed place for me then and it remains a hallowed place for me now. I’ve always felt the National Theatre here is like the Holy Grail. I’ve worked here on and off over the years. It’s very meaningful to be here with this film and with a piece of work that I feel has something to offer the world.”

You get a sense there of his rumoured devotion to the art, but it is all delivered in a gentle, playful manner. Intensity is not really the word for the version of Strong currently in the room. Thoughtful. Focused. Engaged.

In the first decade of the century he moved from small if increasingly prestigious theatre companies to roles off Broadway. In 2008 he made his Broadway debut in a revival of A Man for All Seasons. You can see him on screen as a CIA analyst in Zero Dark Thirty and as Lee Harvey Oswald in Parkland. But Succession changed everything. The scheming, intense, sometimes pathetic Kendall Roy, initially most plausible of the competing inheritors for their father’s mantel in Succession, turned him from a vaguely familiar personality into someone who gets recognised in the 7/11 store.

“I think it’s in the eye of the beholder,” he says of fame. “It’s something that other people might experience, but it’s not really something that I experience. I’m aware that things have changed and circumstances have changed. If anything, the thing that’s changed most is the opportunity to work. I have choice, which is a real privilege. I think it’s very important to be agnostic about what we call success or failure and just keep your head to the grindstone and do your work.”

He furrows his brow and continues in characteristically measured language.

“If we start to buy into that and drink that Kool-Aid and elevate ourselves, I think that would be deleterious towards our being able to do our work, which involves being free of what anyone might think of you. And being willing to make a big fool of yourself.”

Stan went through a similar shift when he took on the role of Bucky Barnes, dark antithesis of Captain America, in the Marvel films. He will return alongside Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova and David Harbour as Red Guardian in next year’s Thunderbolts*.

“I surrendered, a while back, from trying to control any of it,” he says. “You become public property. I feel like Lee Strasberg in The Godfather: ‘This is the business we chose.’ Ha ha!”

What does Strong make of Kendall Roy? Fans of Succession had great fun debating who was the most ghastly of the family members hustling to take over Waystar Royco from Brian Cox’s profane Logan Roy. Kendall initially seems the most engaged with the business, but a clatter of bad decisions, suspicious deaths and substance abuse opened the door for others. Could Strong sympathise with this vulnerable monster?

“It’s sort of an impossible question for me to answer,” he says with a hint of a smile. “Because I never regarded him as something other than me. I never regarded him objectively. So all the things I experienced in the making of that, over seven years, were things that coursed through me. The writing. The other actors. You’re just a vessel, and you’re responding to all of those things. But you’re not apart from it and outside of it. So I don’t think of Kendall as a character. I don’t know what I think of him as. I don’t really think of him. But he lives somewhere in me. A lot of what we do is the art that hides the art.”

It hardly needs to be said that Roy Cohn, the man if not the character, does exist apart from Jeremy Strong. There is the Trump yelling on our telly and Stan’s uncannily impersonated version on the big screen. The two men must have gained some understanding of how the heck this grifting real-estate mogul rose to become the most powerful man in the world (and may do so again). Almost nobody thought it could happen until it actually happened.

“I think it’s as old as time,” Strong says. “Churchill said in 1948, ‘Those that fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it’. Trump is not the first strongman or populist leader. Max Weber wrote about the charismatic leader a long time ago. So I don’t think it should be as surprising as people find it to be. I think that Roy Cohn’s shadow and legacy is behind it, and it gave him the tools and the playbook he needed in order to gain power and ascendancy.”

The Apprentice, an Irish co-production from Tailored Films, premiered at Cannes to good reviews, but it struggled to find US distribution. It has ended up opening just a few weeks before the US presidential election. That feels like a deliberate gesture towards the Republican candidate.

“Coming out now, where this film is intersecting with history and politics, is a heavy thing,” Strong says. “It has a point of view, but it’s not simply trying to demonise Donald Trump. I think that storytelling has a place right now. I’ve been thinking a lot about this thing that William Saroyan wrote. He said: ‘Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil. These, understand.’”

That seems a sensible view. Yet, in the current discourse, dramas about malign forces are, even before a frame has been screened, often bitterly frowned upon. Think of the online fury that erupted at news that Steve Coogan was to play Jimmy Savile. The resulting programme ended up being greatly praised. Even now there are liberal critics objecting to the mere idea of a Trump film.

“Anthony Hopkins played Hitler and Nixon, but he also played CS Lewis. He also played Picasso,” Strong says. “And Hannibal Lecter. It’s an art form. It’s storytelling. It’s only recently that we have begun to find it injurious to portray people that we don’t like.”

The two men have the happy look of comrades – almost a double act – coming to the end of a wearying world tour. There are always pressures, but being called scum by a former president is rarely mentioned on the contracts of employment. Strong seems genuinely impressed by his other half.

“You’re in the line of fire,” he says to Stan. “It was a real privilege and pleasure to get to do this together.”

The Apprentice is in cinemas now

Oct
18

News: Jeremy Strong confirms Springsteen biopic casting and reveals favourite album (includes Sebastian)

NME

Actor Jeremy Strong, best known for playing troubled media heir Kendall Roy in TV’s Succession, has told NME that he’s definitely on the cast for upcoming Bruce Springsteen biopic Deliver Me From Nowhere.

Rumours first emerged in May that he was up for the part of Jon Landau, The Boss’s longtime manager, but were never officially confirmed by Strong’s team. Now he says he’s rubber-stamped the deal – and revealed his favourite Springsteen record to boot: 1982’s stark, introspective gem ‘Nebraska’.

“It just always spoke to me, there’s a melancholy to it,” he said. “I am doing [Deliver Me From Nowhere] but I’d always felt that way about that album. There’s a narrative to it that comes from a very deep place in him and you can feel that.”

Strong also singled out Van Morrison’s acclaimed 1968 release ‘Astral Weeks’ as one he always goes back to. “It’s transportive and it’s pretty perfect,” he said. You can watch the full video interview, in which Strong is joined by Sebastian Stan – his co-star from new film The Apprentice – above.
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Oct
17

News: Sebastian Stan, the interview: “If I met Trump I would ask him how he looks in the mirror”

Movie Player

While answering questions, Sebastian Stan approaches the webcam lens of the computer he is connected to. As if he were, in a certain sense, eliminating distances. Connected from a London hotel for our exclusive interview , he is in the midst of the promotional campaign for Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice , in which he plays none other than Donald Trump . A role, as they say, that is worth a career. An excellent performance by someone who could be considered one of the greatest contemporary actors.

The set, among other things, he shares with two other champions: Jeremy Strong in the role of fixer Roy Cohn, and Maria Bakalova who plays Ivana Trump. Sebastian Stan, for the entire twenty-four minutes of the interview (he was very generous, and that is not at all a common thing), thinks about the answers, takes a breath, weighs his voice. Like when he reflects on what the killer instinct of an actor is, given that in the film, the character of Trump himself, claims to have a deadly instinct “For me it is the truth, and how you make real what, instead, is not” .

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Oct
16

News: Sebastian Stan’s Trump Impersonation in ‘The Apprentice’ Works Because It’s Not a Trump Impersonation

Collider

There was skepticism about the upcoming Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice ever since it was announced, as it seemed unlikely that any film about the life of one of the most controversial figures in American history would ever end up changing anyone’s mind. Beyond the fact that Trump’s entire life has been relentlessly covered ever since he first became a prominent businessman, there were concerns that any actor who took on the role would end up feeling like a comedic impression, similar to the performance that Alec Baldwin gave on Saturday Night Live in the lead up to the 2016 election. Although it would have been easy just to capture his instantly recognizable mannerisms, Sebastian Stan manages to capture Trump’s essence by showing the moments in his life that shaped him into such an influential figure.

‘The Apprentice’ Is More Than Just a Caricature

The Apprentice digs into a very specific period in Trump’s life, in which his father Fred (Martin Donovan), and the Trump Organization were being sued for allegations of discrimination in the development of apartment complexes. The film depicts a more desperate, vulnerable version of Trump who seeks out the mentorship of the legendary lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), who attained notoriety during the Cold War for being one of the prominent prosecutors of alleged communist spies in the United States. Cohn implores Trump to fight any legal or public relations battle that he can, and to never give into public pressure to apologize. However, Cohn does not realize that he would end up creating a monster, with Trump becoming even more vindictive as his quest for power becomes unquenchable.

Stan does not try to replicate all of Trump’s familiar phrases and physical tics, as it is very clear that he has not yet attained the confidence that would make him so successful as a reality television star. There was little point in telling a story about Trump if it was recounting events that a vast majority of the public was already familiar with, but The Apprentice digs deep into the dysfunctional core of the Trump family. Stan captures the animosity of a spurned child who seems desperate to please his father, even if that means crossing over any ethical boundaries; this includes ignoring the serious drug addictions that his older brother, Fred Jr. (Charlie Carrick) has been experiencing. The film’s most harrowing moments involve the dynamic between Trump and his first wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova), who would become an important figure within his empire. Stan makes it clear that Trump views Ivana merely as an object that he can discard as soon as he gets bored; although Trump has said some truly horrifying things in public, the sequences of domestic abuse in The Apprentice are a reminder of the facade that he has always put on.

‘The Apprentice’ Has Insightful Political Commentary

The Apprentice is an epic American tragedy that examines the culture that spurned Trump. Between the cuts given to the wealthy class and the dominance of corporations in the 1980s during the Ronald Reagan administration, Trump was able to fashion himself as a success story, even though he cheated his way to the top. Stan does an excellent job at showing the levels of self-denial that Trump goes through to convince the world that he is someone that should be viewed as a hero. Although it does offer some dark comedy, a scene in which Trump begins to think about the infamous “Make America Great Again” slogan deconstructs that making a phrase memorable is more important than giving it any value.

Stan’s performance is arguably the most memorable aspect of what is sure to be a divisive film, but The Apprentice is as much an indictment of capitalism as it is a criticism of Trump. The film suggested that by conducting himself with confidence and charisma, Trump was able to avoid facing any real consequences for the misconduct, misbehavior, and dishonesty that dominated his life. The Apprentice doesn’t necessarily capture the Trump of 2024, but Stan’s depiction of the role certainly feels like he could evolve into the controversial man who would change the fabric of American politics forever.

Oct
15

News: Sebastian Stan Scolds “Hypocrite” Trump at ‘The Apprentice’ U.K. Premiere: “Do You Really Trust This Person to Lead a Country?”

The Hollywood Reporter – Stan, who portrays Donald Trump in Ali Abbasi’s new movie, was asked whether this film debuting so close to the U.S. election could sway voters: “He’s been trying to censor this movie, and at the same time, he claims he acknowledges free speech. I can’t think of anything more hypocritical.”

Sebastian Stan has branded former U.S. president Donald Trump a hypocrite who has attempted to “censor” his new movie, The Apprentice.

The Marvel actor spoke at the BFI London Film Festival premiere of Ali Abbasi’s movie about Trump’s rise to power in 1970s and ’80s New York — in which he stars as the real estate mogul-turned-Republican politician — with the teachings of mentor Roy Cohn (played by Jeremy Strong) guiding him on his ascension.

When asked whether this film debuting so close to the U.S. election could sway voters, Stan told The Hollywood Reporter: “I don’t know, but what I do hope is that people, regardless of their opinion, are curious enough to try to dig deeper. Because I think we’re living in a world where it’s so easy to be handed an opinion everywhere you turn. And I know a lot of people love social media, and that’s where they go for information and for things. You’re being told what to think. You’re being told what to do.”

But, the Marvel star continued, “If you have any inkling of interest, go and really ask yourself: ‘Who is this man? Do you really know? Do you really trust this person to lead a country?’ He’s been trying to censor this movie, and at the same time, he claims that he acknowledges free speech … I can’t think of anything more hypocritical. So at the end of the day, it’s about him as a character. Forget the politics and just go in there and use your instinct and ask yourself: Do you trust this man? That’s what the movie is about.”

The feature film opened in roughly 1,700 theaters across the U.S. last weekend after its debut in Cannes and pulled in an anemic $1.6 million in its first weekend. Trump lashed out against the film after the numbers came in.

“A FAKE and CLASSLESS Movie written about me, called, The Apprentice (Do they even have the right to use that name without approval?), will hopefully “bomb.” It’s a cheap, defamatory and politically disgusting hatchet job, put out right before the 2024 Presidential Election, to try and hurt the Greatest Political Movement in the History of our Country,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

Sherman told THR: “It’s not surprising [that Trump lashed out]… You’ve seen the film, the first lesson that Roy Cohn teaches him is: attack, attack, attack. So Trump hasn’t seen the movie, but he’s clearly following the rules that are in the movie.”

Sherman also said part of the inspiration for this film was to show Trump as carrying on Cohn’s legacy, as sources who worked on the 2016 Trump campaign told him the businessman was just “using Roy’s lessons.”

The Apprentice received rave reviews and an 8-minute standing ovation after its Cannes Film Festival premiere in May.

Oct
13

News: Sebastian Stan on ‘Losing Sleep’ Over Not Resembling Donald Trump, ‘That’ Scene From ‘The Apprentice’ and ‘F—ing Hard’ Action Movies: ‘Tom Cruise Is Not a Normal Person’

Variety

Sebastian Stan was “losing sleep” over not resembling Donald Trump physically.

“This was always a problem. Everyone has been saying to me: ‘You don’t look like him.’ You’ve already seen so much of him, so I thought it would be better to go ‘less is more’. But we still had to find the right hair and make-up people,” he said at Zurich Film Festival.

“When we started the film, we had a prosthetic test and it really didn’t look like him at all. I was very worried about that – we all were. Then fortunately I called the team who helped me with [portraying] Tommy Lee on ‘Pam & Tommy.’ We were able to find the right balance.”

Since its Cannes premiere, Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice” has been sparking controversy due to a scene which shows Trump sexually assaulting his then-wife, Ivana.

“You have to look at your feelings towards something you’re about to do and you have to be very diligent, strict and honest with yourself. Which of them are going to work for you and which are going to work against you? The ones that are going to work against you, you have to discard in order to serve the story,” said Stan about the violent sequence.

“It’s interesting to listen to Ali talk about that scene, because he goes: ‘Why is it controversial?!’ You can’t ignore [Ivana’s divorce] deposition, when she went on record to explain it graphically. Then she retracted it. Screenwriters had to decide what’s closer to the truth and maybe speaking under oath is closer to the truth. You can’t tell this story without including that part of their relationship and that part of his character.”

When he first read the script, written by Gabriel Sherman and depicting Trump’s friendship with infamous attorney Roy Cohn, Stan went as far as “crossing out the names of the characters.”

“I had very strong feelings about it. Then I did this game with myself and I could see a little bit clearer once I removed that big stain from the windshield. There was a story there about someone who started out a certain way, had very specific ideas and dreams, fears, insecurities and family issues, and then something happened. The man, to me, lost the person he was.”

He added: “It seems to me that [in Trump’s case] the need for power and control is so deep it overpowers any other need. I think we are talking about someone who has made the decision that ‘No one will ever have more power than me, ever again.’ You have to ask yourself if a person like that can really make the right decisions. If you are calling yourself the leader of the free world, we have a right to question that.”

As the team kept on working, trying to explore the very idea of the “American Dream” and the hero complex, said Stan – “This obsession with being all you can be, being the best of the best at everything” – Ali Abbasi’s unique perspective turned into an asset.

“He’s not American and doesn’t play for any team. I thought: If anyone has anything to say that we’re not thinking of, being so deep in it, it’s probably someone not from America.”

He also opened up about working with Jeremy Strong, cast as Cohn.

“Roy Cohn was the devil. A lot of people say that,” he noted.

“I’ve always admired [Jeremy] because I felt he cares. Everyone says they care, but they do only as long as it serves their interest. We met a month and a half before shooting: I was trying to gain weight and he was losing it. He said: ‘Do you want to eat anything?’ ‘Yes, I’ll have a burger with fries.’ He replied: ‘I’ll order a cocktail.’ I said: ‘I don’t drink now, he doesn’t.’ He said: ‘Yeah, but he drinks with me in the movie,’” laughed Stan.

“I didn’t really see Jeremy out of character. We would only meet on set, as Roy and Donald. There was no time for dinners or hanging out, or anything like that. I think it helped.”

Playing someone “everyone feels very strongly about and we can’t escape” was especially difficult, but playing a real-life person is a “technical process similar to learning how to play an instrument,” said the actor.

“You are sitting there, every day, for a number of hours. It’s slow and tiresome and annoying, and then you get faster [at it]. You know what the goal is, you just have to get there somehow. I always think of ‘Apollo 13,’” he said, recalling the “putting a square peg in a round hole” scene. “You have to figure out how to fit into it even though you’re not that.”

While “The Apprentice” is very much on his mind, Stan also discussed his role as Bucky Barnes in the Marvel universe.

“Action movies are really fucking hard. I think they don’t get enough recognition. Tom Cruise is not a normal person, right? I don’t know how he’s doing what he’s doing. I’ve never thought I’ll get to play the same role for 15 years. It’s weird – it’s almost like having a second life. He’s evolving as I am, hopefully, in life.”

He’s always happy to hear from Marvel.

“It’s like Christmas morning when the call comes. Santa Claus still lives. We’ve been trying to find new things with [Bucky] and Marvel allowed that. It’s not like now, he’s a good guy and morally invincible. He always has to deal with what he’s done. That’s relatable. That’s all of us.”

Stan came a long way since leaving Romania and later Austria as a child. “I would always do impressions, so my mum thought: ‘He should try doing this.’ She took me to this open call for [Michael Haneke’s] ‘71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance’ and I remember hating it.”

It wasn’t until coming across a “basement full of VHS tapes” in the U.S. and going to an acting camp “after years of wanting to be an astronaut” that things changed, leading to collaborations with such filmmakers as Ridley Scott, Darren Aronofsky or Soderbergh.

“When you get a little more successful, they respond. I’ve been very aggressive about it. I’m okay with saying: ‘I would really like to work with you.’ Sometimes it’s okay to let people know,” he laughed.

Stan recently starred in “A Different Man,” scoring an award at Berlinale – “An important step in my journey” – but as proven in Zurich, some fans never forgot his earlier roles either, including a lengthy stint on “Gossip Girl” as a troublemaking heartthrob.

“Some people never do. I still get it sometimes when I’m getting a coffee and someone whispers: ‘Carter Baizen.’ It’s like ‘Fight Club’ or something.”