Category: The Apprentice

Sep
29

Photos: ‘The Apprentice’ Production Stills

I’ve added 7 new UHQ Stills of ‘The Apprentice’ in the gallery. Also, ‘The Apprentice’ kickstarter ends tonight.

* NOTE: If you want to donate to the kickstarter click here: RELEASE THE APPRENTICE

Sep
26

Photo/Video: Sebastian on Jimmy Kimmel (w/ Screen Captures) – 9/25/24

Sep
24

Photo/Video: Brian Tyler Cohen interviews Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong about the new movie ‘The Apprentice’

Forgot to add this to the site in the last few days. Sebastian and Jeremy Strong get interviewed by Bryan Tyler Cohen regarding ‘The Apprentice’ and Trump.

Sep
24

News: Playing Donald Trump In The Apprentice ‘Was Like Riding A Psychotic Horse Through A Blazing Stable’

Empire Magazine

How do you even begin to play a character like Donald Trump? One of the most polarising figures of the 21st century has, at various points, been a general celebrity-adjacent public persona; a reality TV host; then, one of America’s most divisive politicians. For Sebastian Stan – whose on-screen political subterfuge has so far been of the fictional kind as the MCU’s Winter Soldier – that was one of the biggest challenges of The Apprentice. No, not the business-flavoured series that Trump hosted in the US, but the title of Ali Abbasi’s new film, dramatising Trump’s early years.

As Stan tells Empire, the process of parsing everything that swirls around Donald Trump – the anger, the adoration, the hate-him-or-love-him obsession – while synthesising what needed to come across in The Apprentice was one hell of a challenge. “Working on it with Ali was like riding a psychotic horse through a blazing stable,” the actor says. It was a role that not only required getting inside Trump, but also assessing everything outside of him too. “We’re talking about somebody that everyone has an opinion about, that everyone has an impression of, that everyone has strong feelings for. I had to distance myself from that, but also I was paying attention to how he has been portrayed,” Stan explains. “So I watched everything. I watched stuff that impersonators did. All the things. But I also just had to go towards the collaboration and the vision that I was sharing with Ali.”

The result is a film that explores the moulding of the Trump we know under the wing of New York attorney Roy Cohn (played by Jeremy Strong), dialling into the man behind the maelstrom. “The film normalises him. To some degree,” notes Stan. “There’s a preference to speak about him in a very selective, sort of distanced way. Like he’s this separate entity from the rest of us humans here on Earth. He’s either God, in the skies, blessed by everything, or he’s like Satan incarnate into the depths of the Earth. And the truth is, he is a human being. The movie shows there is much more here to relate and understand than I think we’re willing to admit. And to me, there’s a journey of watching a man turn to stone over a process of time.”

Read Empire’s full The Apprentice story – speaking to Sebastian Stan and Ali Abbasi about their provocative Donald Trump origin story – in the 40 Years Of The Terminator issue, on sale Thursday 26 September. The Apprentice comes to UK cinemas from 18 October.

Sep
23

News: Sebastian Stan’s Crash Course in Becoming Trump

New Yorker – After a long tour of duty in the Marvel universe, the Romanian-born actor is conquering the festival circuit, with starring roles in “The Apprentice” and “A Different Man.”

The actor Sebastian Stan glanced approvingly at the neon signage and old-school menus at the Pearl Diner, in the financial district, the other day. He’s lived in and near New York since he was twelve—around the time Donald Trump swapped his first wife, Ivana, for Marla Maples—and has watched the city evolve. “It’s funny. It’s changed, but it’s also the same buildings,” he said. “And then you’re, like, ‘The buildings are there, but you are not the same.’ ”

Stan took off a white ball cap and ordered coffee with cream; he was jet-lagged, fresh from the Deauville American Film Festival, where he’d received the Hollywood Rising-Star Award. “Rising” is a stretch for the forty-two-year-old, who’s appeared in a dozen Marvel projects, but Stan has lately reached a different echelon. In May, he went to Cannes for “The Apprentice,” in which he plays seventies-era Trump. In Berlin, he’d won the Silver Bear, an award whose previous recipients include Denzel Washington and Paul Newman. “Everyone was, like, ‘Oh, the Silver Bear!’ ” Stan said. “Then you go back and you’re, like, ‘Do we know what the Silver Bear is in America?’ ”

The prize was for his role in “A Different Man,” Aaron Schimberg’s surreal black comedy, which nods to “Cyrano de Bergerac.” Stan stars as a man whose lifelong disfigurement is miraculously reversed; the shoot included a grisly three-and-a-half-hour session spent peeling off chunks of his face.

“The Apprentice” demanded a transformation of a different sort. At the diner, Stan pulled out his phone and swiped through an album labelled “DT physicality”—a hundred and thirty videos of Trump, which capture his tiniest gestures and his over-all mien. Marinating in Trump content was, Stan said cheerfully, “a psychotic experience.” He watched the clips so many times that when the director, Ali Abbasi, asked him to improvise in a scene about marketing Trump Tower, he could rattle off the stats: sixty-eight stories of marble in a peachy hue chosen by Ivana, because, as the real Trump put it in a promo, “people feel they look better in the pink.” (It turned out that he’d also memorized Trump’s lie: the tower is actually fifty-eight floors.)

Growing up in Communist Romania, Stan had just an hour of TV news each night; New Year’s Eve was an event because it meant twelve hours of programming. His instinct for mimicry—he had a habit of imitating family members and neighbors—was the earliest tell that he might be an actor. After he and his mother fled to Vienna, in 1989, Stan got his first credit, in a Michael Haneke film—an experience that nearly put him off show business. “I stood in line with, like, a thousand kids, for I don’t know how many hours—which I hated,” he said. “If I could fucking meet Haneke now, it would be amazing!”

When the family moved again, to America, he experienced pop-culture shock. He binged every movie he’d missed—from “Back to the Future” to “Ace Ventura”—in a pal’s basement. Another friend roped him into the school play. “My high school was really, really small, so I didn’t have a lot of competition,” Stan said. “They were, like, ‘Please be in the play!’ ” Soon he was playing Cyrano himself.

After stints on Broadway, and on “Gossip Girl,” Stan was scooped up by Marvel. “I’ve been lucky to play a character for fifteen years,” he said. The blockbuster paychecks freed him up to explore edgier material. “I, Tonya,” in which he played the ice-skater Tonya Harding’s dirtbag husband, was a turning point. “It allowed me to see that a good director will bring out more in you than you can,” Stan said. It was also his first time portraying a real person—a feat that he repeated in “Pam & Tommy,” as the Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, and now in “The Apprentice.”

“It’s like learning a piece of music,” Stan said, of nailing an impression. “You’ve got to start out slow—it requires practice. Suddenly, you’re getting it more. You’re still making mistakes—but you’re playing the music. You’re playing the music every day until you can do it in your sleep. That’s when the fun starts.” He sliced the air for emphasis, then caught himself and grinned. “And sometimes it’s months later at a diner, and you’re, like, ‘Why am I doing that with my hands?’ ”

Published in the print edition of the September 30, 2024, issue, with the headline “Trumpier.”

Sep
20

Photo/Video: ‘A Different Man’ Video Interviews (w/ Screen Captures)

The ‘A Different Man’ press run has started! Below are video interviews from Jake’s Takes, Cinema Daily US, Black Girl Nerds, Variety, and the Today Show . Jeff Conway from Forbes will also have video of his interview posted in a few days, but for now the five listed are below. I’ve also added screen captures of each of the gallery. Enjoy.





Sep
20

News: Sebastian Stan’s Year of Transformation, Trump, and “One Giant Nightmare”

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)

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Sep
20

News: Sebastian Stan Tells All: Becoming Donald Trump, Gaining 15 Pounds and Starring in 2024’s Most Controversial Movie

Variety

It started with the most famous voice on the planet, the one that just won’t shut up.

Sebastian Stan, in real life, sounds very little like Donald Trump, whom he’s playing in the new film “The Apprentice.” Sure, they share a tristate accent — Stan has lived in the city for years and attended Rutgers University before launching his career — but he speaks with none of Trump’s emphasis on his own greatness. Trump dwells, Stan skitters. Trump attempts to draw topics together over lengthy stem-winders (what he recently called “the weave”), while Stan has a certain unwillingness to be pinned down, a desire to keep moving. It takes some coaxing to bring Stan, a man with the upright bearing and square jaw of a matinee idol, to speak about his own process — how hard he worked to conjure a sense Trump, and how he sought to bring out new insights about America’s most scrutinized politician.

“I think he’s a lot smarter than people want to say about him,” Stan says, “because he repeats things consistently, and he’s given you a brand.” Stan would know: He watched videos of Trump on a loop while preparing for “The Apprentice.” In the film, out on Oct. 11, Stan plays Trump as he moves from insecure, aspiring real estate developer to still insecure but established member of the New York celebrity firmament.

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Sep
12

Photos: ‘The Apprentice’ Production Stills

I’ve added 8 new UHQ Stills of ‘The Apprentice’ in the gallery. Thank you to Sandra for her assistance on a few of these once again. Also, ‘The Apprentice’ kickstarter has reached past 300k, whats the reward for 400? Will we find out?

* NOTE: If you want to donate to the kickstarter click here: RELEASE THE APPRENTICE

Sep
12

News: Meet Sebastian Stan, the actor who plays Donald Trump in The Apprentice

Vogue France – From Gossip Girl to Marvel Studios, to more independent productions: Sebastian Stan’s career has been a roller coaster ride. During his visit to the Deauville American Film Festival, Vogue put the actor, who at 42 years old won a Revelation Award.

On October 9, Sebastian Stan be will Donald Trump in The Apprentice . Some know him for his role as Carter Baizen in Gossip Girl . Others, for that of the Winter Soldier in Marvel productions. But recently, the American actor, of Romanian origin, has ventured into more independent fiction, which sheds a new light on his career. At the Deauville American Film Festival , he came to present A Different Man by Aaron Schimberg , in which he plays Edward, a young disabled actor decides who to change his appearance to, he believes at the time, improve his life. On the contrary, this transformation marks the beginning of his fall. An antagonistic role such as he has long played on our screens, and which he continues in The Apprentice , presented in May 2024 at the Cannes Film Festival , and directed by filmmaker Ali Abbasi . So many elements that made us want to talk with the 42-year-old actor during his visit to Normandy , where he was awarded the Revelation Prize. As proof of the new direction taken in his career, today considered by the proponents of European cinema, possibly, let’s confess, more snobbish than their American compatriots.
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