Sebastian Stan has revealed that attempts to use makeup and prosthetics in a bid for him to resemble Donald Trump in The Apprentice “turned out terribly.”
Ali Abbasi directed the biopic which bears the same name as the business-themed reality show that Trump fronted years before becoming president. Stan plays former President Trump as he builds his real estate empire in New York City between the 1970s and 1980s under the tutelage of his lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn (portrayed by Succession star Jeremy Strong).
While the film does allude to Trump’s political ambitions, it doesn’t include his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns or his four years as president, instead focusing on his origin story and rise as Cohn’s ultimate apprentice.
With The Apprentice having been released at theaters on October 11, Stan made an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, where he spoke about his career, including his work on the movie.
From left: Donald Trump is pictured on October 15, 2024 in Cumming, Georgia; Sebastian Stan on October 15, 2024 in London, England. Stan has spoken about portraying Trump in new movie “The Apprentice.”
ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/AFP via Getty Images;/Mike Marsland/WireImage/Getty Images
When asked by host Josh Horowitz how he felt about the high likelihood of Trump criticizing or praising the movie, Stan said that it “certainly has crossed my mind. But that wasn’t going to really affect, I guess what I was trying to do.”
“Me thinking about [Trump watching] would be me approaching this from a result-oriented place,” he went on. “And I have to tell you, even as I was in makeup tests and we had prosthetics tests that didn’t work and turned out terribly, there was always an element of failure with this.
“Even when we were doing it, I was like, ‘Am I doing too much? Am I doing too little? When is it enough? … There was always this, this sort of thing that kept dancing ahead of you, a shadow that you were kind of chasing, in a way. But you can’t get into anything with, with expectations.”
Months before the Gabriel Sherman-written film hit screens, Steven Cheung, the communications director for Donald Trump’s election campaign, told Newsweek that there were plans to sue.
“We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers,” he said. “This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked.
“As with the illegal Biden Trials, this is election interference by Hollywood elites, who know that President Trump will retake the White House and beat their candidate of choice because nothing they have done has worked.
“This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should not see the light of day, and 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, it belongs in a dumpster fire.”
Jeremy Strong (left) as Roy Cohn and Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump in the movie “The Apprentice.” The film was released on October 11.
Pieff Weyman
In one scene, The Apprentice depicts Trump as raping his then-wife Ivana Trump (played by Maria Bakalova) following an argument. While the allegations have been publicly discussed over the years, the scene makes for jarring viewing as the glamorous couple’s marital troubles rise to the fore.
In her 1990 divorce deposition, Ivana Trump alleged that she had been sexually assaulted by her former husband. She disavowed the allegation in 2015 when Donald Trump was running for president.
Ivana Trump, who died in 2022, denied the claims when a book revealing the allegations in the deposition was about to be published, according to ABC News.
“I have recently read some comments attributed to me from nearly 30 years ago at a time of very high tension during my divorce from Donald,” she said in her 2015 statement. “The story is totally without merit. Donald and I are the best of friends and together have raised three children that we love and are very proud of.”
Late Sunday, Donald Trump branded The Apprentice a “disgusting hatchet job” in a post shared on his Truth Social platform.
“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,'” the Republican presidential nominee wrote.
“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, ‘MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!’
“My former wife, Ivana, was a kind and wonderful person, and I had a great relationship with her until the day she died. The writer of this pile of garbage, Gabe Sherman, a lowlife and talentless hack, who has long been widely discredited, knew that, but chose to ignore it.”
“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, which is far bigger than any of us,” he added.
Responding to the erstwhile real estate mogul’s rant, an account for The Apprentice movie on X, formerly Twitter, posted an image of Donald Trump’s post, alongside the caption: “We couldn’t think of a better endorsement @RealDonaldTrump. #TheApprentice is Now Playing in Theaters nationwide!”
