“The Apprentice”: The Controversial Film About Donald Trump’s Rise in the Business World

Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi is directing “The Apprentice,” a drama about the rise of the 45th president of the United States in the New York real estate business during the 1970s and 1980s. The film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on May 20 and has yet to be released in the U.S. due to a lack of distributor.Who is playing Donald Trump?Sebastian Stan plays Donald J. Trump in the film. “It was a long and arduous process and, to be honest, I just didn’t know if I could do it,” Stan told Vanity Fair about portraying Trump. “I just scoured the internet and everything I could find… throughout the entire time the film was happening. I watched everything.Who else is in the film?Jeremy Strong plays the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn, the attorney who prosecuted the Rosenbergs and served as chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the controversial Army-McCarthy hearings in the 1950s. Cohn was an important mentor to Trump in the early days of the businessman-turned-politician’s career. Maria Bakalova plays Ivana Trump, the businesswoman who was married to the former president from 1977 to 1990. Ivana Trump was a key participant in the business operations of the Trump Organization and is the mother of Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric Trump. She passed away in 2022 and was buried at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster.What is the film’s timeline?Although its title obviously recalls Trump’s reality show on NBC in the 2000s, the scope of “The Apprentice” is limited to an earlier chapter in the mogul’s career. As the film focuses on how Cohn’s mentorship profoundly influenced Trump as a businessman and leader, and Cohn died in 1986, it is safe to assume that the film will not venture beyond the mid-1980s.ControversiesShortly after its premiere in Cannes, Trump’s campaign announced its plans to sue the filmmakers. “We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false claims of these fake filmmakers,” said Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung in a statement. “This garbage is pure fiction that sensationalizes long-debunked lies. Just like Biden’s illegal trials, this is electoral interference from the Hollywood elites, who know that President Trump will reclaim the White House and defeat their preferred candidate because nothing they did worked.” One of the alleged lies the film addresses is an allegation of rape by Ivana Trump, which she later recanted.When will “The Apprentice” be released in the U.S.?Due to the controversies surrounding the film and Donald Trump and the risk of lawsuits, the producers of the drama have struggled to find a distributor in the United States. According to The Washington Post, it seems that they have finally managed to secure a partner. Briarcliff, an independent producer with a history of distributing controversial films like Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 11/9,” is interested in Trump’s story.Source: Yahoo! News and The Washington Post