What Sebastian Stan Feels About Donald Trump After Acting in His Biopic “The Apprentice”

Released on October 11, 2024, The Apprentice starring Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump, is garnering attention from the critics and audience. Focusing on Donald Trump’s young life and career as a real estate businessman in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s, the storyline explores his relationship with attorney Roy Cohn and his rise to the billionaire status.

The movie has also received two Golden Globes nominations – Stan in Best Actor and Jeremy Strong in Best Supporting Actor in Motion Picture categories.

A snippet from The Apprentice | Credits: Studiocanal UK

Stan received a lot of appreciation from his fans for portraying such a role. However, the actor revealed that no other actor was ready to go on ‘actors on actors’ conversation with him because everyone was afraid to talk about the president-elect.

Sebastian Stan reveals his feelings on playing Donald Trump in The Apprentice

Sebastian Stan on Actors Roundtable | Credits: The Hollywood Reporter YouTube

Sebastian Stan, who is popularly known for playing Bucky Barnes aka Winter Soldier in the Marvel movies, portrayed Donald Trump in The Apprentice. During his conversation at the Actors Roundtable on The Hollywood Reporter, he was asked if he ever felt a little bit intimidated to play such a legendary character. He said,

I had a personal thing with the American dream because I came to this country from Romania when I was 12, and my father helped people escape illegally. I had heard all about the American dream and have been trying to this day to figure out what this dream is and what it gives us and what it takes away. That overrode any sort of fear about doing it because it was him. I played this little game with myself where I crossed out the names [of the characters], and there was still a Michael Corleone sort of story. And here was this filmmaker [Ali Abbasi] who was European, who’d fled Iran, who’s fearless and whose last film was all about his previous country, coming into this with a fresh perspective, not wanting to play for any team, just removing all judgment. 

Stan continued to explain that he wanted to know who the real person Trump is beneath all the characteristic masks. He added,

And when you peel back the layers, you get to the core of a powerless child who has been enacting a sort of vendetta of revenge that we’ve all been subjected to, to no end. I think that we as artists, as actors, have to keep reflecting the times that we’re in as best as we can, no matter how ugly they are.

The movie received a mixed response from its audience, Trump himself called it a “cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job” ahead of its US release. This comment came in as the film features a scene where Trump can be seen forcibly having s*x with his ex-wife, Ivana. He even called it “fake and classless”.

Difficulties Sebastian Stan faced while filming The Apprentice

Sebastian Stan | Credits: Jimmy Kimmel Live YouTube

Sebastian Stan was quite nervous before starting to shoot the movie. In the same conversation, he recalled how panicky he was every night. The actor said, “I was having panic attacks every night.” There wasn’t enough time for him to get in Trump’s shape, and his prosthetics even hadn’t gone well. He continued,

There was not enough time to gain weight, and the prosthetics test failed badly, so I was fucked. And not only that, but the director, two weeks out, goes, ‘Originally, I was going to cast a woman to play Trump,’ and I was like, ‘Why are you f*cking telling me this two weeks before?! I’m going to die.’

In another conversation with BBC, the director of the movie, Ali Abbasi told Lizo Mzimba that making the film, finding a distributor for it, and releasing it in the US was “by far the most challenging thing I’ve ever done”.

Even after getting a standing ovation at the Cannes, it didn’t help them get a distributor. The Apprentice also suffered from a box office loss after the premiere.

Sebastian Stan was shunned by his peers for acting in The Apprentice

Sebastian Stan from A Different Man | Credits: A24

During a Q&A alongside the filmmaker Ali Abbasi, Stan opened up about how he couldn’t find another anyone to do an interview with him because they were too afraid to go and talk about this movie. He said,

You know, I’ve got to do a lot of great things, and that’s not pointing at anyone specific. It was … we couldn’t get past the publicists or the people representing them, because [they were] too afraid to talk about this movie.

His claims were even confirmed by Variety’s editor-in-chief, who told People, “What Sebastian said is accurate,” and continued,

We invited him to participate in Actors on Actors, the biggest franchise of awards season, but other actors didn’t want to pair with him because they didn’t want to talk about Donald Trump.

Ever since the announcement of the movie, The Apprentice, there has been a lot of controvery and speculation about it. However, as per the director, the whole idea behind this biopic was to humanize these people who have a nice side along with a mean one. He further clarified in many interviews that it was neither a propaganda nor a hit piece, rather it was an artistic take.

The Apprentice was released in the theatres on October 11, 2024. It hasn’t got a free streaming platform yet, but if you want to watch it, then you can rent it on Apple TV+.