Jeremy Strong, left, as Roy Cohn and Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump in The Apprentice, directed by Ali Abbasi.
Jeremy Strong, left, as Roy Cohn and Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump in The Apprentice, directed by Ali Abbasi.
The film followed a thorny path to distribution - including the threat of a lawsuit by its subject.
If you know one thing about the new Donald Trump biopicThe Apprentice, it’s likely this: The former President doesn’t want you to see it.
The drama, which debuted to mostlypositive reviews at the Cannes Film Festival in May, follows a young Trump (Sebastian Stan) as he meets – and falls under the spell of – lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong); brashly courts, then quickly tires of his first wife, Ivana Trump (Maria Bakalova); and becomes single-mindedly obsessed with winning, at everything, at all costs.
Despite praise for Stan and Strong, the film, directed by Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi and written by author Gabriel Sherman, struggled to secure distribution, and Trump threatened to file a lawsuit to block its release.
But in August, Briarcliff Entertainment, a distributor founded by Tom Ortenberg, a producer on Spotlight and W, acquired the theatrical rights and announced plans to release the film before the presidential election. The film debuted in US cinemas October 10, again drawing largely positive reviews but just US$3.5 million at the box office.
Here’s what to know about the off-screen saga and the on-screen story.
What period in Trump’s life does the film cover?
It chronicles Trump’s younger years as a New York real estate developer, though the title comes from the TV series Trump later hosted for 14 seasons.
The movie begins with a 27-year-old Trump meeting Cohn at a swanky New York club in 1973, follows his bumbling courtship of – then separation from – Ivana and ends with Trump’s efforts to distance himself from Cohn, who was gay and suffering from Aids, as he dies in 1986.
He’s presented as driven: he courts the assistance of the well-connected Cohn to get himself and his father out of legal trouble when they’re sued over racial discrimination in housing. But it also depicts him as vain (he undergoes liposuction and scalp reduction surgery to get rid of a bald spot), callous (he appears indifferent to the suffering of his dying mentor) and cruel (in one difficult-to-watch scene he rapes Ivana).
Who is Roy Cohn?
A cutthroat prosecutor and later a defence lawyer, Cohn put dozens of alleged communist sympathisers on trial during the Red Scare of the 1950s; was a hardball deal-maker who frequently extricated clients – including Mafia bosses – from legal jeopardy via insider connections in New York real estate, politics and business; and drove gay government workers out of their jobs – while leading a secret gay existence himself.
Cohn denied he was gay to the end of his life and insisted publicly that he had liver cancer. He was indicted four times on charges of extortion, securities fraud and obstruction of justice, but never convicted. Weeks before he died, he was disbarred for, among several offences, defrauding clients.
How factual is the film?
It opens with a disclaimer that a few aspects of the story are imagined but notes that most of it is documented.
The reality? While books and articles have over the years speculated about some kind of hair procedure, the former President has consistently denied it.
As for the accusation of rape, in her divorce deposition in 1990, Ivana Trump, under oath, detailed an assault by Trump. Journalist Harry Hurt III obtained the testimony and wrote about it in his 1993 book, Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump. But she later walked back her claim and said she hadn’t intended for her description to be taken literally.
“As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness which he normally exhibited towards me was absent,” Ivana Trump, who died in 2022, said in a statement provided by Trump’s legal team added to the book. “I referred to this as a ‘rape,’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”
After it premiered at Cannes in May, he threatened to sue to block its release. A spokesperson for his campaign, Steven Cheung, issued a statement calling it a defamatory work of “pure fiction which sensationalises lies that have long been debunked”. Trump’s lawyers also sent a cease-and-desist letter warning the filmmakers not to pursue a distribution deal. To date, no lawsuit has been filed.
What do critics think of the film?
The two lead performances, by Stan and Strong, have been near universally praised. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film stands at 81% fresh among reviewers. The New York Times’ chief critic, Manohla Dargis, commended the film for its “gleefully vulgar fictional dramatization” and made it a Critic’s Pick.
Why did the film struggle to find distribution?
Major studios and streamers – including Focus Features, Searchlight, Sony, Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Video, A24 – passed, wary of both potential litigation by the Trump team and the film’s box office potential. Then Ortenberg’s Briarcliff acquired the rights in August.
Though Briarcliff is fairly new to the scene, Ortenberg is no stranger to controversy: when he was the president of theatrical films at Lionsgate Entertainment he championed Michael Moore’s anti-Trump documentary “Fahrenheit 11/9″.
How is Daniel Snyder involved?
Snyder, who owned the NFL’s Washington Commanders for more than two decades before selling the team in 2023 under pressure amid several NFL investigations, is a longtime friend of – and past political donor to – Trump. He is also a backer of the production company Kinematics, one of the original financiers of the film.
After Snyder watched the movie, Kinematics tried to block its US release and then eventually sold its stake in the film.
Snyder has not commented on his role in Kinematics decisions, but the company’s president, Emanuel Nuñez, has said that the legal action did not have anything to do with Snyder.
“All creative and business decisions involving ‘The Apprentice’ have always been and continue to be solely made by Kinematics,” he told Variety, adding that he and the company founder Mark Rapaport “and I run our company without the involvement of any other third parties”.
What happened in the racial discrimination case?
Things, to put it mildly, did not look good for Trump and his father. The Department of Justice presented evidence that they had taken measures to avoid renting to Black tenants at 39 of their properties. Cohn advised the Trumps to countersue the Government for defamation, and the case was settled without them admitting guilt.
Did Cohn really teach Trump his “three rules of winning”?
Maybe not in those exact words. The filmmakers’ three rules of “attack, counterattack and never apologise” echo the characterisation of a 2016 Washington Post article about Cohn’s influence. Cohn never claimed to preach three rules – but he undoubtedly provided a model to Trump on how to exert power.
