Screengrab from the official trailer for The Apprentice.
Photo: The Apprentice/Briarcliff Entertainment
Still not sure who this Donald Trump guy really is? Now you can finally explore the former and perhaps future president’s origin story via the biopic The Apprentice. For many months, it looked like American audiences may never see the movie as it struggled to find a distributor and faced legal threats from the Trump team. But now the film is set to hit U.S. theaters in October, just a few weeks before Election Day. Here’s a guide to all the ongoing controversy surrounding the film.
After playing at several film festivals, The Apprentice will hit theaters nationwide on October 11, 2024.
The Apprentice is a drama about how a young Donald Trump built his business in the ’70s and ’80s as he was mentored by the infamously ruthless lawyer and power broker Roy Cohn. It was written by journalist Gabriel Sherman and directed by Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi.
Abbasi told TheWrap that in addition to covering the story of how Cohn helped Trump “become the person we now know,” the film is also “a story of a system, the depiction of the American system, the legal system, the inherent corruption in a system that allowed people like Roy Cohn to navigate freely and sort of pull the levers of power as they see fit.”
Donald Trump is played by Sebastian Stan, whom you probably know as Bucky Barnes from the Marvel movies.
Roy Cohn is played by Jeremy Strong, who won an Emmy for playing Kendall Roy in Succession.
Ivana Trump is played by Maria Bakalova, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in 2020’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.
According to the cast list, the film also features Trump’s parents and siblings, Roger Stone, Andy Warhol, Ed Koch, Rupert Murdoch, and Ivanka Trump as a child, but don’t expect to see all the MAGA World characters we know today.
Yes. In the first trailer, released on September 10, Cohn coaches Trump as they roam around New York City, the two wind up coming to blows, and Trump hears a Ronald Reagan pitch featuring the slogan “Let’s make America great again!”
Dan Snyder, the billionaire former owner of the NFL’s Washington Commanders, put money into The Apprentice via the film production company Kinematics because “he was under the impression that it was a flattering portrayal of the 45th president,” per Variety. Snyder is Trump’s friend and donated $1.1 million to his 2016 presidential inaugural committee and Victory Fund, as well as $100,000 to his 2020 reelection campaign. So he wasn’t thrilled when he discovered that the film shows Trump popping amphetamines, getting liposuction, raping Ivana, and developing various despicable traits. Variety reported in May 2024:
Snyder finally saw a cut of the film in February and was said to be furious. Kinematics’ lawyers were enlisted to fight the release of “The Apprentice,” and the cease-and-desist letters began flying. Kinematics president Emanuel Nuñez insists that the creative impasse between his company and the filmmakers didn’t involve Snyder. “All creative and business decisions involving ‘The Apprentice’ have always been and continue to be solely made by Kinematics. Mark and I run our company without the involvement of any other third parties.”
While Snyder’s level of involvement is a matter of dispute, after premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in May, The Apprentice struggled to find a distributor in the U.S. Some — most notably, Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times — raised concerns that the film was being suppressed for political reasons. But at the end of the summer, Kinematics sold its stake in the film, and the independent distributor Briarcliff Entertainment struck a deal to release it in the U.S. and Canada. THR reported on August 30:
In the end, THR has learned, Kinematics’ interest in the film was bought out by Apprentice producer James Shani, whose company, Rich Spirit, is among the film’s other backers; and Rich Spirit and Briarcliff will partner on the theatrical release.
No, but he threatened to do so.
Trump’s attorneys sent a cease-and-desist letter to the filmmakers of The Apprentice in an attempt to block the film’s release, Variety reported in May. But as is often the case, the Trump team has yet to follow up on their legal threat.
In recent months, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung has repeatedly issued the same statement denouncing the film to several outlets, per Deadline:
“This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked,” Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung told Deadline …
“As with the illegal Kamala witch-hunts, this is election interference by Hollywood elites right before November, 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 never 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.”
Yes, Ivana accused Donald of rape in her 1990 divorce deposition. However, she walked this back several years later (and again during Trump’s first presidential run), saying that while she had used the word “rape,” she did not want this “interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”
Ivana’s allegation first became public in the 1993 unauthorized biography Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump. Author Harry Hurt III obtained a copy of Ivana’s sworn divorce deposition from 1990, in which she said Donald had raped her in a fit of rage the previous year. The Lost Tycoon is now out of print, but the Daily Beast summarized the relevant passages in 2016:
The book, by former Texas Monthly and Newsweek reporter Harry Hurt III, described a harrowing scene. After a painful scalp reduction surgery to remove a bald spot, Donald Trump confronted his then-wife, who had previously used the same plastic surgeon.
“Your fucking doctor has ruined me!” Trump cried.
What followed was a “violent assault,” according to Lost Tycoon. Donald held back Ivana’s arms and began to pull out fistfuls of hair from her scalp, as if to mirror the pain he felt from his own operation. He tore off her clothes and unzipped his pants.
“Then he jams his penis inside her for the first time in more than sixteen months. Ivana is terrified… It is a violent assault,” Hurt writes. “According to versions she repeats to some of her closest confidantes, ‘he raped me.’”
Following the incident, Ivana ran upstairs, hid behind a locked door, and remained there “crying for the rest of night.” When she returned to the master bedroom in the morning, he was there.
“As she looks in horror at the ripped-out hair scattered all over the bed, he glares at her and asks with menacing casualness: ‘Does it hurt?’” Hurt writes.
Donald has repeatedly denied both the rape allegation and the claim that he had a scalp-reduction procedure. Just before Lost Tycoon was published, Donald Trump’s legal team provided a statement from Ivana that appeared on the first page of the book.
“During a deposition given by me in connection with my matrimonial case, I stated that my husband had raped me,” the Ivana statement said. “[O]n one occasion during 1989, Mr. Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently toward me than he had during our marriage. As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent. I referred to this as a ‘rape,’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”
Ivana issued another denial when the allegations resurfaced during Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. She told CNN:
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. 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. I have nothing but fondness for Donald and wish him the best of luck on his campaign. Incidentally, I think he would make an incredible president.
Ivana dismissed the rape allegation while promoting her book in 2017, telling Time, “That was all just the lawyers’ talk.” Ivana died in 2022 at the age of 73. She remained on good terms with Donald and was buried at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club.
Aside from Ivana, more than 20 other women have accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct. In May 2023, a Manhattan jury found that Trump was liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of rape.
The general consensus is that the leads turn in strong performances, particularly Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan. The New York Post’s Johnny Oleksinski called Strong “superb,” adding, “He’s Roy three times over: A Roy Cohn–Kendall Roy–Logan Roy mashup that could rip you to shreds in a single breath.” Deadline’s Pete Hammond said, “Stan eases into the role, suggesting the young Trump without venturing into an SNL-like impersonation. He captures him precisely and believably throughout.”
However, the film may not tell you much about Trump that you haven’t pieced together from him dominating the American political discourse for nearly a decade. “By this point, Trump and every political pundit with air time has made it abundantly clear who he is and how he got that way,” writes Maureen Lee Lenker at Entertainment Weekly. “The most disturbing aspect of The Apprentice is how familiar this all is by now and how numb we are to its depravity.”
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