‘The Apprentice’ Filmmakers Discuss Blind Criticisms of Their Movie, Offer to Screen It for Trump, Think He Will Like It

On Sunday morning, just hours after the North American premiere of The Apprentice — a film about the relationship between Donald Trump and his mentor Roy Cohn that everyone in the film community has been talking about for months — the principal creators of the film sat down with The Hollywood Reporter for their first stateside interview about the project. Director Ali Abbasi, writer Gabriel Sherman and stars Sebastian Stan (Trump) and Jeremy Strong (Cohn), seated alongside each other on a giant sofa in a Telluride hotel suite, were still giddy about the fact that The Apprentice had finally made it to America and had been very warmly received, because neither of those outcomes were assured.

Indeed, in the three months since the film’s world premiere at the Cannes Festival, backers of the film faced legal threats from Trump campaign — and resistance from the principal financial backer of the film, a Trump ally who was displeased with its portrayal of the man — that threatened to keep it from ever being seen again. It was not until Friday morning that — as THR was the first to report — a deal was reached through which Tom Ortenberg’s Briarcliff Entertainment and James Shani’s Rich Spirit bought out that financier’s interest in the film, paving the way for a U.S. theatrical release starting on Oct. 11, less than a month before the presidential election, and, more immediately, for screenings at Telluride.

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How close did we come to this film not being here at this festival? I mean, I was already on the ground here when we reported that the deal had been completed and the film was coming…

[Everyone looks at each other and laughs]

STRONG What are we allowed to say?

ABBASI Don’t fucking put me in this spot. [laughs]

STRONG I’ll go out on a limb and say I don’t think it was a given by any means.

SHERMAN I mean, nothing in Hollywood is a sure-thing. Every movie that gets made is a miracle. But we’re just so happy it’s here.

STRONG The stakes were very high, and a lot of people worked really hard to get us here.

The first screening of the film in the United States took place here last night, three months after the world premiere in Cannes. It wasn’t certain that the film would ever be seen again. I overheard a little bit about you guys saying that last night’s screening was a pretty heightened experience for you.

ABBASI I got genuinely nervous. I don’t usually get nervous in that situation because it’s part of my job to say shit and present, but I got nervous because I felt a little bit like I made a movie about neurosurgery and now I was going to show it to the Neurosurgery Association of America. It really got to me. I don’t know if it’s the high altitude or something, but I also got really emotional.

You got emotional before, during or after the screening?

ABBASI When I was presenting [introducing the film before the screening] and I was like, “This [screening the film in America] is actually coming home.” I also got emotional for you guys [Stan, Strong and Sherman] because I know how high the stakes are, and me, as an outsider [living in Europe], have the luxury of playing the game and not dealing with the consequences.

SHERMAN You can go home after this. [laughs]

ABBASI Exactly. Maybe. We’ll see about how that turns out. With this movie, all four of us tried to defy the expectations of what people would think, which is that this is, first and foremost, “a Trump movie.” This is not a Trump movie. This is a movie about — speaking on my own behalf — the American political system. And a Frankenstein story of how Roy Cohn created Donald Trump in his own image. These guys [Stan and Strong] really illustrate the system. So, in that way, I’m super excited and happy that it’s coming out before the election — but it’s not like if it came out in the second week of November, it wouldn’t be [relevant].

Gabe, I’ve read your articles and book. That book was made into a screen production, The Loudest Voice. But this is the first time you’ve written a screenplay, right?

SHERMAN A feature, yeah. The origin of this movie really owes itself to Telluride. I had finished an early draft of the script in 2018. My manager, Guymon Casady, was walking out of a screening of [Abbasi’s film] Border here, and knew that my producer Amy Bear and I always wanted to find a non-American director to tackle this subject. Because I live in New York, I’ve written about Trump for 20 years — I’m so inside that system — so to have that insider-perspective married with an outsider point of view, we thought, could be really interesting. So Guymon called me and said, “I just saw this movie. I think we found the filmmaker for The Apprentice.” And he sent me a link for Border and said, “I’m not going to tell you anything about the film. I just want you to watch it.” And it was such an original voice. I thought, “I don’t know what Ali’s going to do with this movie, but it’s going to be exciting.” And that was really how the partnership came together.

I want to say one more thing picking up on what Ali said about this film. When I came up with the idea and sat down to write it, I was covering Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign for New York magazine and I felt like everyone had an opinion about Donald Trump, but his entire character was reduced to a two-dimensional cartoon. It was either like “he’s the second coming” or “he’s Satan,” but no one actually said, “Well, how did this happen? Who is this man and how did he learn these strategies that got him into this place to run for president?” So the idea of the script was just curiosity: “How did this happen?” And if you changed Trump and Cohn’s names and made them Bob Smith and Ted, the story works as a dramatic story on its own, because it’s such a fascinating portrait of a master teaching an apprentice, and the apprentice outstripping the master. So I think it’s a little misguided when people say, “We already know everything about Donald Trump,” because we actually don’t. We don’t know those years. I think this movie — hopefully — sheds a light on his character for the first time, to show who he was before he was on our TVs every day.

Gabe, many people who have not yet seen this movie have opined that, “This must be a hit job” or “This must be made up.” The one thing they’ve heard of, if they’ve heard of anything, is about the rape scene. The film opens with a disclaimer that essentially it is almost entirely based on documented fact, but that certain liberties were taken — and, by the way, no movie is entirely non-fiction.

SHERMAN Of course.

So what would you say to the people who are skeptical about how accurate this is and whether or not there is an underlying agenda?

SHERMAN Well, first of all, let’s say at the top here: it’s not a documentary. This is a work of art. It’s fiction. It’s inspired by real events, it’s inspired by real people, it’s based on really rigorous research, and the idea in the writing, and I think in the filmmaking and the acting, was to try to find the most emotionally true story we could find. And I’ll just speak to the scene you’re talking about with Ivana. She made those allegations under oath in a divorce proceeding under the penalty of perjury. She then clarified her statement under pressure from Trump’s lawyers when a book was about to come out. And then in 2015, when he was running for president and she was the mother of his children who could go to the White House, she said, “Oh, this didn’t happen.” So if you’re a writer and you’re striving for an emotionally true version of the story, what feels the most true to you? To me, the statement that she’s going to say under oath, with lawyers present, very close to the event that happened, to me outstrips anything she said afterwards. So when we were approaching the movie, that is the version of the story that we went with, because it’s based on her actual testimony. I think audiences can draw their own conclusions, but people should go into this movie knowing that it is a work of art, but is inspired by real people and real events.

STRONG Can I also jump in and just say something? I came to this not as a Democrat or a Republican, but as a humanist. And through a humanistic lens, your job always is to interrogate human experience and life. And the mirror thing [Abbasi said, during his introduction of Saturday’s screening, that he was trying to hold a mirror up to American society] makes me think of Hamlet. In Hamlet, he writes that our job is to hold a mirror up to nature and to show the age and body of the time — its form and pressure. I think that’s what this movie does. It’s an attempt to show the form and pressures of this moment in time that, in a sense, formed Donald Trump. So to me, the endeavor is not a political endeavor at all. It’s a humanistic endeavor.

Ali, you noted that, as an Iranian living in Denmark, you have an outsider’s perspective on all of this. What do you think that enabled you to see about us Americans or America that we might not?

ABBASI When Ang Lee did The Ice Storm, I think someone said only a foreigner could do such an American movie, and I hope that’s the way it is with this. Sometimes when you take a few steps back, you can see things a bit simpler, without having different interests or distortions or misconceptions. I’m not saying that only because I’m not American I can do that. I am interested in the point of view of people that I don’t agree with. I’m more interested in the point of view of people I don’t agree with. I don’t want to ever make a movie about a guy from Iran who came to Denmark and went to film school. That really doesn’t interest me. It’s interesting to look for humanity in unexpected places.

Also, I’ve been very occupied with the whole construction of a monster, because it’s a very deep-rooted tool in every culture, really. In order for us to not be monsters, we need to find the monster. I saw a documentary on Roy, and they repeatedly say, “He was the devil on earth. He was the devil on earth.” But everything you saw in the documentary was like, “This guy’s pretty charming.”

STAN And loyal.

ABBASI And he was pretty cool. And then he did some other stuff which was not cool. And then you start to go, “Ah, okay, so someone created this construction of a monster from him.”

Is that also somewhat connected to your previous films, Border and Holy Spider, which also go to some dark places and center on some dark characters?

ABBASI Yeah. People are interested in different things. My main interest in life is complexity. I’m not the one who finds these simple one-liners of, “This is life.” I’m the opposite. When I did Holy Spider, the moment I got interested in doing the movie was the moment when, really strangely, I felt empathy for this guy who was super religious, and was doing something extremely wrong, and somehow tried to convince himself that he was even holier than everyone else. I was like, “This is crazy, but I understand it, in a really strange way, and I don’t want to. I really don’t want to.” It’s the same here [with The Apprentice]. I think, “This is so wrong, this is bad taste, this is despicable — but I really understand it.”

STAN Just to piggyback on that, because that speaks to me: I think, my wanting to do this movie, and why I respect him [Ali] and everyone here for having the balls to do it, is because it does attack that very discomfort that you [Scott] are referencing towards this film. Everything in this film, if you go and you look at the research and connect the dots to the past, happened. It’s true. People perhaps like to forget that he was on Oprah and David Letterman and Larry King, and everybody embraced him and was championing him to be who he was in the eighties.

ABBASI Yeah. The first typed-up article about him was in the New York Times.

SHERMAN And that quote in the film, when his mom is reading back the article that says that he looks like Robert Redford, is a verbatim quote from the archives. That’s not dialogue that I made up. I just copy and pasted what the New York Times said about him. Trump and Roy, in these years, the seventies and eighties, were embraced by New York liberal society. They were fun to be around. The danger and the sense of their infamy made people like Barbara Walters and others want to spend time with them. And it all seems like fun and games to be with these rogue, outside characters, until we see what happens when Trump becomes president. And I think the movie, hopefully, in some ways, serves as a cautionary tale that embracing infamous people because you think, at the end of the day, it’s all just a cartoon — it might not work out that way. And we should be a little bit more, I think, circumspect about the characters that we’re promoting.

STRONG To continue along with what Sebastian was saying, when we otherize and demonize whoever — whether we’re otherizing and demonizing Ali for making this film, or whether we are allegedly doing that to the subject of this film — it’s a cop-out. It’s a way to let yourself off the hook. I think what we’re attempting to do is not just demonize or otherize someone, which just leads to the divisiveness that we’re find ourselves in now. Understanding is, I think, what we’re reaching for, and is what we all need more of now.

Sebastian and Jeremy, when you signed up to play these parts, you knew you had a great script and a great filmmaker, but also that it was a hot potato that could cause headaches for you on this end of things, when it’s coming out into the world. Given the way that people who have gotten on the wrong side of Trump and his supporters have been treated in other scenarios, did that give you any pause? And has there, in fact, been any blowback so far related to you having been part of this film?

STAN Interestingly, I’ve had actually a lot of Republican friends who are very excited about the film. But obviously, there are things, like you’ve mentioned, that you can’t go into this film without thinking about it. But for me, it really was about these two relationships [referring to his relationship with Abbasi and his relationship with Strong]. Ali and I actually met in 2019. That was the first time we had a conversation about this journey. And I was pretty sure about his [Abbasi’s] vision, and then this partnership [with Strong], because this film is a partnership. I said [to Abbasi], “[Whoever is cast as Cohn] has to be someone that I can go on a limb with.” And when Jeremy came along, it really felt that I had a partner. And I think that was very important for this.

STRONG I’ll say this was one of the great joys of my life, this partnership, working with Sebastian on this movie — working with all of you, but this relationship and the love affair of it. I think we’re quite similar as actors, and just being out on the ice together was great. And I guess none of the things that you mentioned [regarding the risks of taking on the part] really entered into my mind. The column that I assessed this on was purely the creative column. And I think — and we’re probably similar in this [gesturing to Stan] — what I always look for is the possibility of transformation and risk, and this [project] lights those up all the way to outer space.

But just for the record, are either of you increasing your security or anything like that? Have there been any threats or problems thus far?

[both pause and avoid answering the question]

STAN Well, the funny thing is, Scott, you should read my Marvel fans! They’re a trip.

ABBASI I see some of them on my feed! But I just want to say — and this is going to be extremely banal, so excuse me for saying it, but — I think it’s important to talk about the political aspect of the movie and what it means and Donald Trump, but it’s also important to talk about it as a movie which has really good, incredible performances that I’m really, really proud of. It has a tempo I feel really good about. It has a sound design that’s come together pretty well. I’m biased, obviously, but this is how I feel. And I feel like there’s a balance between getting the tackiness of that time in New York [the 1970s and 1980s] and the vulgarity and the glamour. And those things add to one thing: It is an experience. And that experience, in my opinion, is not a political experience, per se. It’s a movie experience.

My answer to your question is, honestly, in a normal world, I wouldn’t see why any one of us should have more security or whatever, because this is a movie experience, and I think it’s relatively fair and balanced, in terms of accuracy of character. And when you [Stan] say your Republican friends are excited, I don’t even see why they shouldn’t be excited, you know what I mean?

Sebastian, before deciding for sure that you would play the part of Trump, did you guys do a test with costumes, makeup and prosthetics to just confirm that you could be made to physically look like him, or did you guys just take a leap of faith and focus on other aspects of preparation?

STAN It was really difficult because the movie had a lot of starts and stops, so every time you would start researching and getting into it, it would drop. I guess I had a lot more time than usual to look things up and piece it together, but everything is always a panic attack — until you get there and then you figure out, “Oh, wait a minute, I’m not alone. There are other people that are going to come in and affect things. There’s a vision already in place.” I think trying to find the right prosthetics was really [daunting]. We had one test where I was like, “I think we’re going to die” [because the prosthetics looked so bad]. And that was days from shooting.

ABBASI I remember Sebastian was trying to be diplomatic and polite about it, like, “What do you think?”

STAN I feel like the nature of the schedule allowed us to be v24/7 in this world, and that was something that I had never experienced that fully. We had six hours of daylight, basically — it was December and January in Toronto. It was freezing. I was in a [makeup] chair at 4am and I was going to bed at 10pm, so I never saw loved ones. There was an isolation to it. But when we did the camera test, I saw a gaffer who, when I came in dressed [as Trump] and said something crude, just shook his head [as in, “freaking Trump”].

Jeremy, I know how tirelessly you prep for roles. What was the most important thing for you to do before you got to set to play this role?

STRONG It’s hard to quantify, in a way. I guess the deal is, I have to be able to be inside of it and walk onto that set with a total sense of belief that I am him. So a lot of work goes into that — a lot of preparation and research and osmosis. This one felt particularly challenging for a lot of reasons. I worked on Lincoln a long time ago, and I remember standing on the second floor of the White House set that Rick Carter had made. We were somewhere in Virginia, and I was with David Strathairn, and we watched Daniel [Day-Lewis, who played the title character] come up the stairs with his stovepipe hat. And David turned to me and he said, “Spirits walk.” On this film, I snuck into the soundstage—

ABBASI You weren’t supposed to be there.

STRONG —and watched them [Stan and Maria Bakalova, who plays Ivana Trump] shooting the Oprah interview. I just sat in the backm — I was in wardrobe, but we hadn’t started yet. It was a pre-shoot day. And I had that same feeling, just seeing him [Stan]. I was like, “Oh, this [film] is going to work.”

You two [Stan and Strong] had never met before this movie?

STRONG We have mutual friends and I’ve admired Sebastian’s work for a long time. But unless we were able to be toe-to-toe with this and, in a way, mind-meld, it wouldn’t have worked. So that part? That’s like a miracle. You don’t know if it’s going to happen.

STAN I do want to share one moment that was really great for me, when I was like, “Oh, this is going to be so much fun.” We [Strong and I] were like, “Okay, should we meet in New York? We only have a couple of weeks [before production].” Jeremy suggested this place for us to meet, and it was this cocktail lounge place.

STRONG It was like Le Club [the New York private club at which Cohn and Trump first met].

STAN It was like Le Club. So I was like, “Okay, we’re going to go!” I was already trying to put on weight, so I was like, “I’ll have a burger,” and he [Strong] was losing weight. Anyway, we met at this place, and he said, “Do you want a cocktail?” And I said, “Oh, Jeremy, I’m not drinking for this.” And he goes, “Well, you do with me!” [The same dynamic that Cohn and Trump shared in the scene in the film in which they first met.] And it was a good night. [laughs]

SHERMAN I was fortunate enough to be on set for a lot of the shoot, and I think what I was blown away by, and I think it shows on the screen, is anyone who was working on this movie was doing it not for money and not for comfort. It was a total sacrifice. It was freezing in Toronto. We had a half-assed crafts table. Ali works incredibly fast. People were there because they believed in the movie, and I think that shows on the screen. This was a very much an underdog production. This was not a “Hollywood” movie.

Well, my last question is for you, Gabe. Having studied Trump closely, there’s no way he’s not going to figure out a way to see this film, right? And when he does, what do you think his reaction will be?

SHERMAN Well, I guess the question is: What is his public reaction and what is his private reaction? I think privately, there’s a lot for him to like in this movie. It does speak to a time in his life when he was actually building real things. I think publicly, it serves his political interests to pick fights with anyone, and we might be those people. But audiences should see through that. If he attacks the movie, it’s only because he thinks he’s going to score political points. He’s not a film critic, per se.

ABBASI I want reiterate: I would love to show him the movie.

If he asked to see it, you would screen it for him at Mar-a-Lago?

ABBASI If I get a business class ticket, I’ll go. [laughs] I think Mr. Trump, at the end of the day, is a very smart person. We studied his pattern of speech, and you can see that he has deliberately dumbed-down his way of talking. When he was 27, he was talking in a very collected and serious way. I don’t think that person has gone away. And I think that person would appreciate a lot of the nuances here.

SHERMAN I mean, Citizen Kane is one of his favorite movies. He loves cinema. So I feel like, as a cinephile, he should like this movie.