The Apprentice: Trump brands film about his life 'fake and classless'
ITV News Entertainment Editor Nina Nannar spoke to stars of The Apprentice Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong
No one is pulling their punches. The film, its lead actors or Donald Trump.
On the day my interview with Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong takes place, Trump, who is of course running for president again, has issued his response to the film The Apprentice in an early morning post on social media.
He calls it “fake and classless”, adding that he hopes the film will bomb and goes on to call the filmmaking team “human scum”.
The film’s director Ali Abbasi took to social media in response saying “thanks for getting back to us”.
The two leads respond with something like despair. Sebastian Stan plays Donald Trump in an an astonishingly well observed performance - and Succession star Jeremy Strong takes on the role of Trump‘s then attorney Roy Cohn, a notorious figure in the 1970s and 80s in New York.
"It’s not fake," Strong maintains, saying the film was based on historical documentation.
The Apprentice tells the story of a young Donald Trump as he navigates New York real estate, an overbearing father, and marriage to his late ex wife Ivana.
It controversially includes a harrowing rape scene based on a claim by his former wife during their divorce, something she later retracted. He has denied the claims.
The actors say the movie did not set out demonise Trump, but to tell an accurate story of how he got to become the man he is today.
It was Cohn who, according to the film, taught Trump three lifelong lessons - attack, attack attack, admit nothing, and always claim victory even in the face of defeat.
The Apprentice shows Trump being taken under Cohn’s wing as he seeks to transform the New York skyline with his building Trump Tower, before he rejects the lawyer. Cohn later died of an illness resulting from AIDS.
The story of the films release could be a film in itself.
Major distributors in the US turned down the chance to take the movie on amid threats of legal action from Trump and his team who called The Apprentice election interfering by Hollywood elites.
Eventually one stepped forward, Briarcliff Entertainment - who put the film on in 1740 screens.
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Strong and Stan praise the company for its courage and dismiss reports about the opening weekend’s takings being poor.
"Look at Fight Club," says Stan.
"That film had a bad opening weekend and we’re still talking about it today. We will definitely be doing that with this film way beyond us talking about Donald Trump."
If you could measure a film’s success on the number of headlines it has garnered, this one would certainly be a huge hit.
With just weeks to go before the US election, the filmmakers are anxious for as many people to see The Apprentice as possible.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, is not.
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