Despite Donald Trump’s efforts to shut down the soon to be released Ali Abbasi film The Apprentice, the film is still drumming up buzz as a new clip dropped Tuesday that shows the former president decades prior (Sebastian Stan), as he’s coached through an interview by his late friend and lawyer Roy Cohn (played by Succession’s Jeremy Strong).
In the first clip from the film, which has a tentative release date of October 11, Trump and Cohn share the back of a town car as Cohn bullies a reporter into interviewing Trump. “About a 100 reporters were crawling up my a-- to get this interview and I gave you the exclusive,” the Cohn character says, handing Trump the phone.
Cohn then encourages Trump to use more grandiose language as he speaks to said reporter, just after settling his racial discrimination lawsuit for he and his father’s housing practices. “I’m planning on making the best and the finest building,” Stan says as Trump, “in the city—maybe the country,” and then at Cohn’s direction adds, “in the world.”
ADVERTISEMENT
The Apprentice follows a young Trump as he starts his New York real estate business in the 1970s and 80s, with the help of infamous lawyer Roy Cohn, who died in 1986 and was said to be largely responsible for Trump’s rise to power. The film has received largely positive reviews from critics, many of whom highlighted a controversial rape scene between Trump and his first wife Ivana.
After The Apprentice screened at the Telluride Film Festival this past weekend, the film’s screenwriter, journalist and author Gabriel Sherman, told the Los Angeles Times that the rape scene is a “touchstone of the film because we are asking the audience to spend time with this character and we have to show all sides of him.” He added, “We would be failing ourselves—I’d be failing myself as a writer and journalist—if we didn’t include that.”
Partial financier, Trump ally, and billionaire Dan Snyder was so put off by Trump’s depiction in the film that he tried to prevent it from releasing in U.S. theaters, but had his investment in the film bought out as the movie moves forward with its release as planned—and just before the election. Director Ali Abbasi celebrated Friday with a post on Twitter/X: “Soooo excited to show the movie to its home audience!!! America here we come.”
Trump, on the other hand, has vowed to sue the filmmakers—as his spokesperson Steven Cheung told the Daily Beast, “We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers,” adding “This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked.”
