Vogue

You may have heard something about The Apprentice—the Donald Trump biopic that premiered at Cannes to great fanfare, and not a little controversy. Was director Ali Abbasi’s 1970s set film, starring Sebastian Stan as Trump and Jeremy Strong as his mentor, the New York attorney and ruthless power broker Roy Cohn, too sympathetic to the striving, scheming characters at its center? (Maybe not: After Cannes, Trump’s lawyers threatened to sue.) Certainly when you watch The Apprentice, which opens in theaters Friday, it’s impossible not to be astonished, and enthralled, by the performances of Stan and Strong, who turn real-life hyper-polarizing figures into fascinating antiheroes.

But make no mistake: The Apprentice is a warning. This is a movie, written by the journalist Gabriel Sherman, that will leave you chilled. Here is the story of Trump’s rise, the lessons he learned from Cohn, and a portrayal of power at all costs—what it drives a person to and how it corrupts.

Vogue invited Stan and Strong onto The Run-Through with Vogue to talk about their performances, how the film came together, and why Americans should see it before the November 5 election. Below, read an excerpt of the conversation Vogue.com editor Chloe Malle and I conducted with the two actors in the podcast studio.
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EW – “I hope he sees it. That would alone be worth making it,” Jeremy Strong tells EW.

The cast and filmmakers behind The Apprentice agree on a lot about its controversial subject matter — except for the one question on everyone’s minds now that it’s finally hitting theaters: Will Donald Trump see the movie?

There are valid arguments and evidence for both possible answers. On the one hand, the former president and current Republican nominee has already threatened to sue the filmmakers over his portrayal, with his spokesperson calling it “a concoction of lies that repeatedly defames” Trump. And it’s true, it’s far from a glowing portrait. Over the course of the movie (opening Oct. 11), the dealmaker (played by Sebastian Stan) is shown taking diet pills, getting plastic surgery, and, most disturbing of all, raping his former wife, Ivana, as she alleged happened in a 1990 divorce deposition. (She later denied her initial testimony, saying she felt “violated” but did not mean to be alleging rape “in a literal criminal sense.”)

But it’s not all bad, either. The filmmakers have stressed that they aim to humanize Trump with their movie, which follows him in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s as he grows from a middling real estate heir into a man synonymous with wealth and power. Plus, the 45th president’s love for movies is well-documented. As referenced in the movie, it was his infatuation with West Side Story that led him to collect switchblades as a teen. When he found his son’s stash, Fred Trump Sr. shipped off young Donald to a harsh military school known for corporal punishment. After graduating, he continued toying with the idea of following his dream to become an actor before settling on business school. As president, he screened movies at the White House on multiple occasions, including several showings of his favorite, Sunset Boulevard.

The Apprentice filmmakers on ‘shocking’ struggle to find a buyer: ‘It’s cowardice in the face of Donald Trump’

“I hope he sees the movie, but I actually don’t think he would,” says Jeremy Strong, who plays Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn. “I think there’s a lot in it that he would recognize. And I think there’s nothing really in this movie that he hasn’t acknowledged and even bragged about at some point or another. I hope he sees it. That would alone be worth making it.”

“I’m sure he’s going to watch it at some point,” counters the film’s director, Ali Abbasi. “I feel like we’ve been fair, and I almost feel like there are a lot of things to like.”

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Gabriel Sherman, who wrote the film after covering Trump for years as a reporter, isn’t sure if Trump will see the movie, but he is sure that he wants him to. “Of course, I want everyone to see the movie from Donald Trump on down,” he says. “He doesn’t strike me as the most self-reflective person, but I think it would be fascinating to see him experience this part of his life and either agree with it or disagree. Whatever response he had, I think it would be really interesting.”

Asked to imagine how Trump might feel about it, Sherman notes he’d be “completely guessing,” but offers, “I think, on a basic level, he likes attention. So even if he says he hates the movie, I think there’s a part of him that likes that we’re talking about him as we speak. So I’m waiting for him to say on the campaign trail, ‘They got a Marvel superhero to play me. That’s the only person who could play me is a Marvel actor.’”

Speaking of the Marvel actor, Stan also struggles to envision whether Trump will see it and, if he did, what he’d make of it. “I have no idea. It’s very hard for me to know how he reacts next to anything, so I have no idea, and I can’t speak for him.”

He adds, “It seems like he’s got a lot going on, so I’m not sure he’ll have time, but if he wants to see it, I’m sure he knows who to call.”