“The first rule is: attack, attack, attack.” A kaleidoscopic trailer was released Tuesday of the new Donald Trump biopic/origin story The Apprentice, which depicts Trump’s years becoming an unforgiving Manhattan real estate magnate and Manhattan scenester under the tutelage of infamous lawyer Roy Cohn.
In the film, Sebastian Stan plays Trump, with Succession Emmy-winner Jeremy Strong playing Cohn. The Apprentice had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where critics marveled that it wasn’t just a salacious, headline-grabbing attempt, but an actual Oscar contender. “The Apprentice is an attempt to dig into the psyche of the man who became president—and is now running again—during his formative years, and it’s in Strong and Stan’s portrayals that we begin to see something that hasn’t already been rehashed time and time again,” The Daily Beast’s Esther Zuckerman wrote in her review.
But in the months following that premiere, the film became mired in controversy.
Trump’s ruthlessness and scenes depicting his sexual assault of Ivana Trump riled up his campaign. His team threatened lawsuits that a spokesperson said would “address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers.” (Director Ali Abbasi’s response to that threat: ““Everybody talks about him suing a lot of people—they don’t talk about his success rate though, you know?”)
Dan Snyder, the billionaire former owner of the Washington Commanders, was a producer. Upset with the content of the film, he has since sold his stake.
The trailer for The Apprentice doesn’t offer much in the sense of plot, likely because we all know what happens to the up-and-coming, thirsty mogul with the weird haircut depicted in early scenes. Instead, we get soundbytes of Cohn’s lessons, which are eerie given the man we know today.
“Rule two,” Cohn says: “Admit nothing, deny everything.” And rule three? “No matter what happens, you claim victory and never admit defeat.”
A sprinting montage through scenes of Stan’s Trump shaking hands, being demanding, and having sex with women follows. “You have to be wiling to do anything to anyone to win,” Strong’s Cohn says later in the trailer.
In his review of the film’s preview at the Toronto International Film Festival, the Beast’s Nick Schager wrote that the film “lays out the gory details regarding the source of his egomania, greed, ambition, vanity, sociopathy, and heartless rapey-ness, the last of which comes to the fore in a brutal assault of his first wife Ivana.” Perhaps it’s unsurprising that it’s become known as the film that Donald Trump Doesn’t Want You to See.
The trailer’s eerie conclusion. Cohn says, “I say, if you’re indicted, you’re invited.” Trump’s response: “God bless America.”
