Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong Say Their Trump Movie Is a Tragedy, Not a Mockery
The New York Times
The “Apprentice” stars and the director Ali Abbasi say their film is a “humanistic” treatment of the former president and his mentor, Roy Cohn.
It’s natural to feel nervous before presenting your movie at a major film festival. But in late August, when the director Ali Abbasi boarded a flight to the Telluride Film Festival, he wasn’t even sure if his new movie “The Apprentice” — a fictionalized look at the Machiavellian bond between the young Donald J. Trump (Sebastian Stan) and the lawyer and fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) — would be permitted to play there at all.
“It was really crazy what happened, and I spared Jeremy and Sebastian some of it, but it is a demoralizing feeling,” Abbasi admitted during a recent video call with his two stars. The former president had been threatening legal action against “The Apprentice” since its May debut at the Cannes Film Festival, which chilled distributor interest in the movie for months and made it a controversial prospect for any subsequent festival willing to show it.
“If a movie comes out and people think it’s bad or it’s flawed, you can deal with that,” Abbasi said. “But when it goes into a safe box indefinitely, that was heavy.”
In the end, Trump failed to follow through on his threats, Telluride played the movie without incident and “The Apprentice” ultimately found a distributor in Briarcliff Entertainment, which will release the film on Friday. Still, Strong was perturbed by how many major studios were unwilling to take on the film and potentially incur the presidential candidate’s wrath.
“You think that things could be banned in North Korea or Russia or certain places, but you don’t think that will ever happen here,” Strong said. “It’s a real dark harbinger that it even nearly happened.”
Written by Gabriel Sherman, “The Apprentice” begins with Trump in his 20s as he toils under his real-estate magnate father and aspires to become a momentous figure in his own right. Still, Trump’s ambition exceeds his ability until he meets the savvy Cohn, who takes the young man under his wing and imparts ruthless rules for success that will eventually launch Trump onto the highest stage imaginable.
Rachel Handlin is possibly the first person with Down syndrome to receive an M.F.A., and one of just a few to hold a bachelor’s. Her first solo show features her portraits of others like her.
With shirts playing off Chapel Hill’s name and cutoff hoodies, a college town immediately embraced the arrival of Bill Belichick in North Carolina.
A half-million people are on the Ffern wait list hoping to do just that.
By breaking the story into two movies, the emphasis in “Part One” shifts to a nation’s potential decline into authoritarianism. Sound familiar?
For a man who rose to fame in the gilded yuppie era of New York City, today’s ringing the bell to open the stock exchange, and being named Person of the Year by Time, must have a certain appeal.
A visual tour of the show that seems to defy all the rules.
This was a year whose high points included Joan Jonas’s luminous survey, the extravaganza “PST ART,” and the 24-karat beauty of a show “Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350.”
This visually inventive adaptation of a Colson Whitehead novel follows two boys at an abusive school in Jim Crow-era Florida.
What happens when violent crimes are overshadowed by appearances?
Between her experience on “Babygirl” and her mother’s death, the star has come to understand a lot about women in unfulfilled lives.
As Elon Musk has become a key player in President-elect Donald J. Trump’s world, Tesla owners are marking their cars to signify where they stand — for or against.