I’ve added one new UHQ Still to the ‘A Different Man‘ production stills and two new UHQ Stills of ‘The Apprentice’ in the gallery.
* NOTE: If you want to donate to the kickstarter click here: RELEASE THE APPRENTICE
NEW YORK (AP) — Hard as it may be to believe, there aren’t a lot of Hollywood agents clamoring for their star clients to take the role of one of the polarizing political figures of the 21st century.
Sebastian Stan, though, was committed to “The Apprentice.” More than anything, he believed in its director, the Iranian Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi. And, even though it made him nervous — or maybe because it made it him nervous — he wanted to do it. He wanted to play Donald Trump.
“There wasn’t a lot of competition,” Stan says, chuckling.
“It was one of those things I thought: If this isn’t going to happen, it’s not going to happen because of me,” Stan says. “It’s not going to not happen because I’m scared.”
By a landslide, “The Apprentice” is the most controversial movie of the fall. It stars Stan as a young Trump playing apprentice to the attorney Roy Cohn ( Jeremy Strong ) while trying to make a name for himself in 1980s New York real estate. Already, “The Apprentice” has had one of the most tortured paths to movie theaters of any 2024 release.
After its debut at the Cannes Film Festival, all the major studios and top specialty labels passed on making an offer. One potential issue was a cease and desist letter from Trump’s legal team. Another was that one of the movie’s investors — Dan Snyder, the former owner of the Washington Commanders and a Trump supporter — wanted to exit the movie.
Only last week, Briarcliff Entertainment announced that it will open “The Apprentice” on Oct. 11, just weeks before Election Day. And it’s still fighting for more screens. On Tuesday, the filmmakers took the unusual step of launching a Kickstarter crowdsourcing campaign to raise money for its release.
“This project has been pretty crazy, from beginning to the end,” Abbasi says. “It’s still not completely there. It’s going to get more crazy, maybe.”
Trump’s reelection campaign has vigorously opposed the movie. After its Cannes debut, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung called the film “pure fiction.” On Friday, after its release date was confirmed, Cheung declared it “election interference by Hollywood elites.”
What role, if any, “The Apprentice” might play in the lead-up to Nov. 5 will be one of the most notable storylines at the movies this fall. While many Hollywood stars are vocal supporters of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, it’s far rarer that plainly political films squeak through today’s sequel- and superhero-dominated movie industry. That makes for a unique election-year test case: Will liberals want to see a film about Trump? Will conservatives turn out for a film Trump opposes?
Abbasi, whose previous film “Holy Spider” turned a questioning eye on Iranian society through the story of a serial killer targeting women, says he’s not trying to tell anyone how to vote.
“Do I want to show you some stuff about character? Yes, I would very much love that and I think we have some great stuff to show,” says Abbasi. “What you do with that knowledge is up to you. But that knowledge might come in handy if you want to go and vote.”
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To Abbasi, grappling with contemporary politics is his responsibility as a filmmaker. As ubiquitous as Trump is, Abbasi argues there have been paltry attempts to really understand the former president.
“With Donald and Ivana, they’ve never really been treated as human beings,” Abbasi says. “They’re either treated badly or extremely good — it’s like this mythological thing. The only way if you want to break that myth is to deconstruct it. I think a humanistic view is the best way you can deconstruct that myth.”
“For me, the best comp for him is Barry Lyndon,” Abbasi adds, referencing the Stanley Kubrick film of the same name. “When you think about Barry Lyndon, you don’t think about that guy as being a bad guy or a good guy. He has this ambivalence and this uncanny ability to navigate. He wants to be somebody. He doesn’t really know what or why. He just sort of wants to ascend.”
“The Apprentice” found a mixed reception from critics at Cannes, though Stan and Strong were widely praised. The movie notably includes a scene in which Trump, as played by Stan, rapes Ivana (played by Maria Bakalova). In Ivana Trump’s 1990 divorce deposition, she stated that Trump raped her. Trump denied the allegation and Ivana Trump later said she didn’t mean it literally, but rather that she had felt violated.
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But, Abbasi maintains, “The Apprentice” is not a hit job. He has insisted that Trump, himself, might like the movie. At the same time, some critics have questioned whether “The Apprentice” shows too much empathy to Trump and Cohn, who was Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel during the 1954 communist hearings.
“I don’t think any of us are above it. I don’t think any of us are born perfect people or we’re not morally compromised,” says Stan. “It’s really, really much muddier and trickier than that, life is. I think the only way we can learn is through empathy. I think we have to protect empathy and continue to nourish it. And I think one way of nourishing empathy is showing what its exact opposite can be.”
* NOTE: If you want to donate to the kickstarter click here: RELEASE THE APPRENTICE
Filmmakers of “The Apprentice,” a dramatized origin story in which Sebastian Stan portrays a young Donald Trump, are asking for money to bolster the film’s theatrical release.
In a highly unusual move, they launched a Kickstarter called “Release the Apprentice” to “keep the film in as many theaters for as long as possible,” according to a press release. The crowdfunding campaign features tiered reward levels based on donation amounts, including a $25 donation which allows people to stream the film after it hits theaters, and a $100 donation for which donors will be able to see their name in a special section on the end credits. Higher level pledges include one of three actual toupees worn by Stan on-screen and VIP tickets to attend the film’s premiere in NYC.
“The Apprentice is first and foremost humanist, which makes it radically different from all the political noise,” said executive producer Amy Baer.
“Despite the integrity of the film and without even seeing it, Trump’s campaign sought to suppress it,” added producer Dan Bekerman. “The idea that artists can no longer freely criticize the powerful should concern us all. We need your help to resoundingly reject this dangerous precedent.”
“The Apprentice” premiered at Cannes Film Festival and landed at Briarcliff Entertainment after struggling to find a buyer. The 1970s-set film, directed by Ali Abbasi, proved controversial on the Croisette over a scene in which Trump rapes his then wife Ivana, played by Maria Bakalova. The movie centers on Trump’s relationship with Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), the cutthroat attorney who helped create the man the public knows today.
Trump has criticized “The Apprentice” and the former president’s camp has threatened legal action over the movie, saying in a statement, “This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked.”
TELLURIDE, Colo. —
It is hardly unusual for a director introducing their movie at a film festival to express some anxiety. But as he spoke to the crowd before a packed late-night Telluride screening of his controversial Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice” on Saturday, director Ali Abbasi felt himself sweating with his own unique brand of jitters.
The screening, which had been kept under tight wraps heading into the festival, would be the first time a U.S. audience got a look at the film that ignited a firestorm at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where “The Apprentice” earned an 11-minute standing ovation even as it drew threats of lawsuits from the Trump campaign.
“I don’t get nervous often but I am actually nervous,” the Iranian-born Abbasi (“Holy Spider”) told the Telluride crowd. “This [film] has been some years in the making, and now it’s coming back home to you guys.”
“The Apprentice” charts Trump’s rise to fame and power in the New York of the 1970s and ’80s, with Sebastian Stan portraying the real estate developer and future reality TV star and politician alongside Jeremy Strong as his ruthless attorney and mentor Roy Cohn. Scripted by journalist Gabriel Sherman, who wrote a 2014 bestseller about late Fox News chief Roger Ailes, the darkly comic film presents Trump as a sleazy and callous, if charismatic, social climber who learns the art of achieving power through aggressive attacks, ethical disregard and the strategic manipulation of the the media under the tutelage of the amoral and deeply flawed Cohn.
After the film’s unveiling at Cannes, Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung blasted it as “garbage” and “pure fiction” and vowed to file a lawsuit against the filmmakers in an effort to derail its release. Studios, streamers and indie distributors were understandably wary of picking up such a political hot potato. But ultimately Briarcliff Entertainment stepped in to distribute the film domestically, scheduling its release less than a month before a presidential election that has already been among the most tumultuous and fiercely contested in U.S. history.
The morning after the Telluride screening — and just 64 days before the election — The Times sat down with Abbasi, Sherman, Stan and Strong to discuss the film’s journey, the challenges of portraying such a polarizing figure and the impact they hope “The Apprentice” will have as the country braces for the final stretch of a deeply divisive election season.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
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Hollywood Reporter – Director Ali Abbasi, writer Gabriel Sherman and actors Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong discuss their hot-button Trump origin story that had its North American premiere on Saturday night.
On Sunday morning, just hours after the North American premiere of The Apprentice — a film about the relationship between Donald Trump and his mentor Roy Cohn that everyone in the film community has been talking about for months — the principal creators of the film sat down with The Hollywood Reporter for their first stateside interview about the project. Director Ali Abbasi, writer Gabriel Sherman and stars Sebastian Stan (Trump) and Jeremy Strong (Cohn), seated alongside each other on a giant sofa in a Telluride hotel suite, were still giddy about the fact that The Apprentice had finally made it to America and had been very warmly received, because neither of those outcomes were assured.
Indeed, in the three months since the film’s world premiere at the Cannes Festival, backers of the film faced legal threats from Trump campaign — and resistance from the principal financial backer of the film, a Trump ally who was displeased with its portrayal of the man — that threatened to keep it from ever being seen again. It was not until Friday morning that — as THR was the first to report — a deal was reached through which Tom Ortenberg’s Briarcliff Entertainment and James Shani’s Rich Spirit bought out that financier’s interest in the film, paving the way for a U.S. theatrical release starting on Oct. 11, less than a month before the presidential election, and, more immediately, for screenings at Telluride.
A transcript of the converation with Abbasi, Sherman, Stan and Strong, lightly edited for clarity and brevity, appears below.
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I’ve added 15 new UHQ photos to the ‘2024 Telluride Festival Photos albums (including the one for the premiere screening) in the gallery (he’s in the corner of some of these photos). Sebastian was at the festival for the US premiere of ‘The Apprentice’ last night.
I’ll be adding photos as they appear, keep checking back.
Hollywood Reporter – The actors play Donald Trump and Roy Cohn, respectively, in Ali Abbasi’s film, which had its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on Saturday night.
The Apprentice, the Donald Trump origin story that everyone in the film community and beyond has been talking and speculating about, had its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival’s Galaxy Theatre on Saturday night. The stateside unveiling comes three months after its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and just days after Briarcliff Entertainment acquired its U.S. distribution rights amid legal threats from the Trump campaign, with plans to release it in theaters on Oct. 11, less than a month before the presidential election.
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Interest in the film among those who missed it on the Croisette has been through the roof, to the extent that Telluride’s 10 p.m. Saturday night screening — which was added to the fest’s schedule only a few hours before it took place — attracted a full house of 500 people, with many others turned away. Post-screening reactions were, not unexpectedly, divided. But my own impression from finally seeing the film (I had to return from Cannes before it screened there), and the degree to which the people who like it really like it, is that it should not be counted out of the awards race — particularly its lead actor Sebastian Stan, who plays young Trump, and its supporting actor Jeremy Strong, who plays the man who became his consigliere, Roy Cohn.
The Apprentice was written by Vanity Fair’s longtime Trump chronicler Gabriel Sherman and directed by Border and Holy Spider helmer Ali Abbasi, in his English-language film debut. It covers the period from 1973, when New York businessman Trump, then 27, first crossed paths with power lawyer Cohn, through 1986, shortly after Cohn died (under circumstances that you should not Google if you don’t already know them), and shortly before the publication of The Art of the Deal, the book that helped to elevate Trump from a braggadocious businessman to a full-fledged celebrity.
Trump supporters have assumed that the film would be a Hollywood hit job. That’s partly because most of them have heard only about a brief scene in which Trump is shown forcing himself on his first wife, Ivanka (Borat Oscar nominee Maria Bakalova), which, in fact, is based on an accusation that Ivanka herself made and then, perhaps under pressure, recanted. But the truth is that The Apprentice — which opens with a disclaimer that a few aspects of its story are imagined, but the vast majority of it is documented — is not some mocking caricature of Trump; it’s actually a portrayal that some Trump haters will find too sympathetic.
It is neither a puff piece nor a hit job, but is, as the Iranian-born Dane Abbasi said during his pre-screening introduction, an outsider-to-America’s effort to hold up a “mirror” to our society and force us to look at it anew. It shows the man who would become president as a young, handsome, charming and promising businessman, as well as someone who was emotionally damaged by his father, steered down a dark path by Cohn, and, consequently, became vain, selfish and occasionally very cruel.
Stan nails Trump’s look, mannerisms and unusual way of speaking — which must have been a daunting assignment, given how many other people have done impersonations of Trump — and Strong captures the dead-eyed look and coiled-snake physicality that Cohn possessed going back to his early years as Joseph McCarthy’s henchman.
One doesn’t have to like a character — or even a film — to appreciate an actor’s guts and abilities. Indeed, in recent years the Academy’s actors branch has nominated numerous impressive portrayals of polarizing people in polarizing movies — among them Megyn Kelly, Richard Nixon, Tammy Faye Bakker, George W. Bush, Lynne Cheney and Dick Cheney, and J.D. Vance’s grandma, none of whom are particular favorites of the Hollywood community.
The Apprentice’s distributor, Briarcliff, is relatively new to the scene, but its chief, Tom Ortenberg, is not new to the awards game, having overseen, during his days at Lionsgate, the campaign for Crash, and during his days at Open Road, the campaign for Spotlight — both of which went on to win the best picture Oscar. He has also already retained a number of highly capable awards consultants to help execute a push for The Apprentice. And the talent behind the film is on the ground at Telluride supporting it. So, much like it would be unwise to count out Trump in 2024, I believe that it would be unwise to count out The Apprentice.
Deadline – Controversial Movie ‘The Apprentice’ Has Trouble-Free U.S. Premiere At Telluride As Director Stresses Film Is “Not A Political Hit Piece”: Watch Video
(* Video originally posted by Deadline on x/twitter here and made playable for anyone below)
Filmmaker Ali Abbasi, director of controversial movie The Apprentice, has stressed that his drama about Donald Trump’s rise to prominence in the 1970s-80s “is not a political hit job,” instead describing it more as a “mirror” of the country.
Abbasi initially appeared a tad nervous as he stepped onto the stage of the Galaxy Theater in Telluride for the U.S. premiere of his feature that was a hit at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. You can watch the video below.
The team had been half-expecting legal challenges to prevent the screening and protests from the former President’s supporters. As we’ve reported the film has been facing obstacles since it debuted in Cannes. But Trump’s forces fizzled out and none of them made their way to the mountains in Colorado for the Telluride Film Festival’s special screening that was just announced on Saturday.
Watch on Deadline
Before introducing the film’s writer Gabriel Sherman and stars Sebastian Stan, who packs a mighty wallop in his portrayal of Trump, and Jeremy Strong who plays lawyer Roy Cohn like a snake writhing in a gutter, Abbasi told the audience that he ordinarily doesn’t get nervous “but I am actually nervous, I have to say.”
He added that the movie had been “some years in the making and now it’s sort of coming back home to you guys.”
Abbasi noted that “I have allowed myself as a non-American to take a deep look into this country and system,” and ”some characters,” he said pointedly without naming Trump.
He joked that “we had a special guest. We had reserved three seats there for him and his body guards, we’re still waiting …he might arrive in the dark, you never know.”
Then “on a more serious note”, he said that “at least for myself … this is not a political hit piece. This is a mirror…and it is intended to show you, as the mirrors do, an image of yourselves, not you per-se, but you as community.”
Having viewed the scorching film twice during Cannes, it was possible for this reporter to observe the audience who seemed to be deeply into what Stan described to Deadline as “an origin film in some ways, and I do hope that it does shed a little bit more light on how it is we got to where we got.”
Stan also felt “excited” by Abbasi’s “vision” and his “European filmmaker’s point of view on what’s going on here, because we’re deep in it.”
The interest in the film has only intensified due to the phenomenal interest in this year’s Presidential election.
The Apprentice, as reported by my colleagues, is set for an October release through Tom Ortenberg’s Briarcliff Entertainment .
Guests at the screening included Kieran Culkin who’s at the festival with Jesse Eisenberg’s film A Real Pain, and, of course, he wanted to support Succession sibling Jeremy Strong.
As Deadline told you would happen, tonight at 10 PM is a lock for the US debut of the hot button film The Apprentice, about the formative growth of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as mentored by Roy Cohn. The film has been quietly placed on the Telluride roster, and now they’ve locked the Galaxy Theater.
This comes after months of turmoil that followed the film’s Cannes premiere. Scripted by Gabriel Sherman, the film stars Sebastian Stan as young Donald Trump in the ’70s as he — according to the description furnished by Telluride — “falls under the sway of the demonic lawyer and power broker Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). In following Trump as he learns the ways of celebrity and power in the New York of the ’70s, director Ali Abbasi (Border, The Holy Spider) evokes the gritty documentary style of directors like Sidney Lumet and William Friedkin. And he keeps us riveted to the surprisingly poignant father-and-son dynamic, beautifully enacted by Stan and Strong, that seems fortified by greed, insecurity and endless need.” Maria Bakalova plays Trump’s wife Ivana Trump, and one of the scenes the Trump camp has complained about is a scene showing Trump raping his estranged wife.
There are several buzz films on the schedule tonight, including Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night about the chaos that went into the premiere of the NBC staple Saturday Night Live. But buckle up for The Apprentice. Abbas, Stan, Strong, Amy Baer and Sherman will be there. The film gets released before the elections by Briarcliff, likely on October 11 with international rollout to follow.
Talk about campaign season. The Trump movie will make it to U.S. theaters before the presidential election … and in time to push for awards consideration. Per The Hollywood Reporter, Briarcliff Entertainment will theatrically release Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice on October 11, after the movie first plays at some fall film festivals. A “full-on” awards campaign is said to be planned to promote the biopic, which stars Sebastian Stan as a young Donald Trump opposite Jeremy Strong’s Roy Cohn. For a while, The Apprentice seemed like a potential tough sell, perhaps because Trump’s team threatened to file a lawsuit over it. The movie reportedly includes a scene where Trump rapes his wife Ivana, which he has denied doing (Ivana made the claim in a 1990 divorce deposition, but later said she had felt “violated” and hadn’t meant the word “rape” literally). Billionaire Dan Snyder, who helped fund the film through his production company Kinematics, allegedly also wanted to block its theatrical release after the Cannes Film Festival premiere made him realize that the former president wasn’t portrayed as positively as he expected. A source told Vulture that The Apprentice executive producer James Shani, whose company Rich Spirit is among the film’s backers, acquired the film from Kinematics and partnered with Briarcliff.
Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung claimed in a Friday statement to the Associated Press that the film’s upcoming October release is akin to “election interference by Hollywood elites right before November.” Cheung described The Apprentice as “pure malicious defamation” that “doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store” and instead “belongs in a dumpster fire.” Granted, sometimes that’s exactly the kind of movie that the internet latches onto, but we’ll see.