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Sebastian Stan stars as Trump in new biopic and the former president is BIG MAD
Donald Trump is already threatening lawsuits which means this movie is a must see for us!
The Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice just premiered at Cannes, and the former President is NOT happy about it — which, of course, means we are very curious.
Despite the title, the film doesn’t focus on the presumptive Republican nominee’s time as the host of The Apprentice but instead charts a young Trump’s rise to power in 1980s New York and is an “exploration of power and ambition set in a world of corruption and deceit,” the official synopsis reads.
The film, which comes just five months before the presidential election, stars Sebastian Stan (Captain America) as a young Trump who is mentored by infamous lawyer and fixer Roy Cohn, played by Jeremy Strong (Succession).
“It’s a mentor-protege story that charts the origins of an American dynasty. Filled with larger than life characters, it reveals the moral and human cost of a culture defined by winners and losers,” according to the synopsis.
Stan is great, but why are we feeding this man’s ego by having an incredibly hot actor play him? We all know what Trump looked like in the ‘80s and a Sebastian Stan look-alike he was not.
The year of Sebastian Stan so far, the Oscar nomination is going to land for A different man or for The Apprentice either way he's taking it.
— Karen (@BlackWidow_221B) May 20, 2024
I'm so proud of him.#Cannes2024 pic.twitter.com/xoFE10Y4s4
The Apprentice made its world premiere Monday night at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, receiving a nearly 8-minute-long standing ovation from the audience, Us Weekly reports.
Trump, on the other, was displeased.
Trump’s campaign immediately announced plans to sue director Ali Abbasi — as if the man hadn’t spent enough time in court.
“We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers,” Trump campaign’sSteven Cheung said in a May 20 statement, the outlet reports. “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.”
It’s almost impressive that the statement managed to cram Biden’s supposed witch hunt against Trump (i.e., the court system seeking justice), election interference, and Hollywood elites all into just a couple of sentences. It’s a conspiracy theory trifecta!
“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,” the statement continued.
Trump and his team likely weren’t fans of two controversial scenes. One features Trump getting liposuction, and another depicts his alleged rap of his then-wife Ivanka Trump (played by Maria Bakalova), who had previously said that Trump had sexually assaulted her, though she later recanted her statement.
But Trump isn’t the only one angry about how he’s depicted in the film. Billionaire Dan Snyder — who is friends with Trump and donated $1.1 million to his inaugural committee in 2016 and $100,000 to his 2020 presidential campaign — invested in The Apprentice and isn’t happy because he thought the biopic would portray Trump in a positive light.
Turns out he was wrong, and once he saw a cut of the film in February, Variety reports that cease-and-desist letters were sent out. Luckily for us, the filmmakers decided to release the movie without changing it to suit Snyder.
Are we interested in watching a film about Trump for entertainment when he already occupies too much space in our newsfeeds? No, but the fact that he hates it means that we'll be first in line to buy a ticket!
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
