NEW YORK — Even in an election year, most seem to agree on one aspect about Ali Abbasi’s much-debated Donald Trump film “The Apprentice”: Sebastian Stan is a remarkably good Trump and Jeremy Strong is chillingly riveting as the New York power broker Roy Cohn.
One reviewer recently wrote that Strong’s portrayal of Cohn is “uncanny in its accuracy.” The critic? Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone.
Since its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May, after which the Trump campaign pledged legal action, “The Apprentice” has been hounded by controversy. Its makers have had to fight to secure a theatrical release, which comes just weeks ahead of the election. The Trump campaign has called it “election interference by Hollywood elites.”
“We’re way out on a limb,” Strong says.
The movie, about Cohn’s mentorship of a young Trump in the greed-is-good 1980s, is a dramatic election-year provocation. It’s an origin story of the Republican nominee beginning with Cohn, the ruthless attorney whose tactics of deny-deny-deny made him a sought-after fixer for the mafia, chief counsel for Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunt and a guru to Trump when he was trying to make a name for himself in New York real estate.
“His defiance of reality, and his denial of reality, to me are the signature components of what he instilled in his star pupil,” Strong says, noting that Cohn’s boat was named Defiance. “It’s a legacy of mendacity and lies and denialism and the aggressive pursuit of winning as the only moral measure.”
“The Apprentice,” directed by the Iranian-Danish filmmaker Abbasi and scripted by Gabriel Sherman, puts the Cohn-Trump relationship at its center, and in doing so, gives Strong and Stan two of the best roles of their careers. Strong calls Cohn “probably the single most fascinating person I’ve ever studied and interrogated and attempted to inhabit.”
For two much-satirized figures, the performances are uncommonly humanistic. Cohn has a rich tradition of portrayals, including Al Pacino in Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.” But Strong’s Cohn is uniquely authentic and camp-free. Trump, of course, has been mostly played with “Saturday Night Live”-style parody. But Stan’s Trump is a blank-slate striver, eager to be molded by Cohn. Abbasi says, “I still don’t know exactly how he did it.”
Most actors wanted nothing to do with playing Trump. But Stan signed up, and stuck with the production over several years.
“I went on the ride,” Stan says. “It’s very easy to just keep doing things that you feel you’ve gotten good at. Then something comes along and it feels like such a crazy mountain to climb.”
That may go doubly for “The Apprentice,” a movie that cobbled together financing and struggled to find distribution before Briarcliff Entertainment stepped forward this fall. Sherman first began writing it in 2017. He had covered the 2016 Trump campaign for New York magazine and took note when a Trump associate commented on Trump employing Cohn’s strategies.
Trump, who first met Cohn in 1973 and remained close friends until Cohn’s death in 1986, has spoken about his admiration for him. “Roy was brutal, but he was a very loyal guy,” Trump told author Tim O’Brien. “He brutalized for you.” Politico’s Michael Kruse in 2016 detailed the relationship, writing: “Cohn’s philosophy shaped the real estate mogul’s worldview and the belligerent public persona visible in Trump’s presidential campaign.”
Strong had first been drawn to playing Cohn several years ago for a project that ultimately didn’t happen. But it got Strong thinking about the intriguing paradoxes of Cohn. If finding a character means finding their pulse, Strong says, “in this case, it’s a sort of reptilian pulse.”
“In terms of a sociological, anthropological study, I find him to be a completely fascinating character,” says Strong. “My own judgments have to be left at the door. But it was like peering into the heart of darkness.”
For the two actors, “The Apprentice” posed a particular challenge in balancing judgment and empathy. The film has engendered a spectrum of reaction. Abbasi has claimed Trump might not dislike the film and invited him to see it. Others have criticized the movie for bringing any degree of sympathy to its lead characters.
“The only way we can learn is through empathy,” Stan says. “We have to protect empathy and continue to nourish it. And I think one way of nourishing empathy is showing what it’s exact opposite can be.”
“(Cohn) didn’t believe in showing vulnerability,” says Strong. “He was only interested in projecting strength, and I find that very tragic.”
Ultimately, the makers of “The Apprentice” argue that all of the tools of drama serve a vital role in bringing a deeper understanding to even the most polarizing political figures.
Strong and Stan find themselves in the unlikely position of being scorned by the potential future president for a movie that had to resort to seeking money via Kickstarter. (The campaign has collected more than $400,000.) As much as they’re far out on a limb, both are seen as in contention for their first Academy Award nominations.
“Do I think it’s going to change people’s minds? I’m not sure,” says Strong. “Do I think it will help anyone who sees this movie have a great understanding of the origins of where we are now? Yes, I do. And do I think it could infinitesimally move the needle in a direction that I hope we move in? I do.”
