Yahoo Lifestyle ‘The Apprentice’ Oscar Nominees Sebastian Stan & Jeremy Strong On Why It’s “More Of A Horror Movie” With “Monstrous Egos”
To say that Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong, stars of The Apprentice, have been riding a rollercoaster together would be something of an understatement. From sleepless nights contemplating embodying a young Donald Trump and his mentor Roy Cohn, to a Cannes Film Festival premiere filled with high hopes, a cease and desist from Trump himself, deafening silence from U.S. distributors, a reprieve from Briarcliff Entertainment, a highly combustible release on the eve of the U.S. Presidential election, and now an Oscar nomination each, they might well be suffering from whiplash.
Here, they met with Deadline to discuss how they’ve navigated the ride of the past few months, where they feel the film lives in the public consciousness, and what it means to them to receive Oscar nominations in the current political climate, for playing the President and his early collaborator Cohn.
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SEBASTIAN STAN: I like the haircut.
JEREMY STRONG: Thanks.
DEADLINE: A buzzcut suits you. What’s the story there?
STRONG: My hair was not my own for a long time. And when I wrapped this last film, I buzzed it off… within minutes.
DEADLINE: This was your Jon Landau role in Deliver Me from Nowhere, the Springsteen biopic?
STRONG: Yeah.
DEADLINE: What a time this has been for you both. And here you are with Oscar nominations, after all the ups and downs The Apprentice has been through.
STRONG: Thank you so much. I actually haven’t seen Sebastian since it happened. We spoke, we texted.
STAN: It’s surreal. Yeah, it’s very strange.
DEADLINE: These are heavy, intense roles to represent, and this film has been triggering for a lot of people. Sebastian, I remember we did a Q&A at a screening, and I felt this palpable reaction from the audience, they had so much to say about it. How has it felt to you both being together and talking about this film in this time?
STAN: I think we’ve just taken it a day at a time, it feels like. This thing about you saying the audience was having this visceral reaction and so on, I’ve been thinking a lot about that. That felt like a good sign, because I think the narrative, as we’ve gone down this path, has been the preservation of art and the creative language that we all share and how that transcends politics and leads towards experience and something on a much more visceral level. And I think when it comes to these characters in this story, people have so many feelings, some that have been suppressed, some that haven’t been explored. And I think now, even after these nominations, I feel in a way there’s been something liberating that I’ve felt, I don’t know about you Jeremy, I felt on a very minuscule level of people just feeling that they can start to explore and talk about these things in a different way, or there’s permission to do so. And I think that was always a goal of this film, in my point of view.
When I watched the inauguration, I just thought of [Roy Cohn] hovering over the Capitol Rotunda.
Jeremy Strong
STRONG: I always hear myself talking about wanting to make work that touches the third rail. And I’ve been part of a lot of films that are based in either current events or historical events, but none of them have had quite the sort of intersectional power and voltage that this one has. And I think that’s been uncomfortable for a lot of people.
I was at a dinner recently, and someone said that comfort is going to be the death of us; wanting to be comfortable. And I think that there’s really a virtue in film certainly that is willing to make people slightly uncomfortable. I understand why people have had reservations about engaging with these characters on a humanistic level, but I also think, and I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating, this great William Saroyan thing, that, “Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness and evil. These, understand.” And part of why we’ve gotten into the place they were in, the mess they were in, is a refusal on both sides, I think, to understand each other. So I love that. I see this film not as a political polemic, but as a character study. So I love that we’re getting to do this with you together, Sebastian. And I think we always saw this as a character study, and in a sense, as a relationship, as a love story in the way that Midnight Cowboy is a love story.
DEADLINE: I love that comparison to Midnight Cowboy. I haven’t heard that before, but that really resonates.
STRONG: Donald Trump as the Joe Buck to my Ratso “Roy” Rizzo.
DEADLINE: I think we’ve seen a kind of permission to be mean and cruel in our society, and there seems to be this shadow of Roy Cohn in our world now. And I know, Jeremy, you’ve spoken about this before, about how the long arm of Roy Cohn is still in our lives.
STRONG: Yeah. When I watched the inauguration, I just thought of him hovering over the Capitol Rotunda. And when I saw Trump’s response to Bishop Budde, I just thought, “Well, that’s right out of Roy’s playbook.” Attack, destroy. Roy said, “Hate is a powerful weapon.” He used it as a weapon and as a cudgel. He is encoded in everything that we are seeing unfold today and in these last weeks and months.
But the political column aside, I think for both of us, I grew up watching movies like Mississippi Burning, Midnight Express, The Killing Fields, these movies that spoke to the world had enormous volcanic power. And then watching these performances like Ben Kingsley in Gandhi, or Phil Hoffman in Capote, or Daniel [Day-Lewis] in Lincoln. And I feel like this sort of transformational work is the work that Sebastian and I have both aspired to do. So to have been able to do it with this film and to have this moment of recognition from the community is just unspeakably meaningful.
DEADLINE: Of course, Academy voters don’t represent the U.S. as a whole, but these nominations might mean that more people see this film. It’s back in theaters again right now too.
STAN: Yeah. I think this focus on character is really very important. That’s why I think the movie is vital. And rightfully as you said, where are the examples of men out there right now that are promoting generosity or empathy or compassion, these attributes that we need for survival as human beings, as opposed to these caricature versions of men that operate on a victim-blame mentality that justifies you being an animal: “Go out there, and do whatever you want.” And I think the only way you can understand that is when you go back and connect the dots to what makes somebody become that way.
I think the uncomfortableness of the movie is that it makes the question for evil isn’t necessarily just born, it can also be created. And the truth is somewhere in the middle, and nobody is really spared from that.
The movie, in the context of recent events, has become more and more of a horror movie to me.
Strong
STRONG: I do think that the movie in the context of recent events has become more and more of a horror movie to me. And it’s like Roy Cohn said, and I think I said in the film, he said, “This is a nation of men, not laws.” And we’re really testing out that thesis right now in America. It is being proven out by Trump. He’s the ultimate Machiavellian in the sense that Machiavelli said that, “The ends justify the means.” So in the film, we see Roy Cohn willing to do anything in the name of democracy, which is a kind of Orwellian usage of the word “democracy” in the way that we hear the Orwellian use of the words “freedom” and “democracy” and “justice,” these sort of inverted meanings. It’s really amazing to look at the germinal seeds of that ideology in the relationship between these two men in the time that the film covers.
DEADLINE: One thing that this film shows us is our need to look at the things inside ourselves that aren’t necessarily good or delightful. We all need to look in the mirror. In the film, Roy Cohn and Donald Trump are shown as people that didn’t want to be themselves. And that’s where we run into trouble. This is a study in that. If you aren’t your authentic self…
STAN: Well, yeah, because it’s about lying to yourself. And I think there is a suppression on both of these men’s parts. Deep, deep suppression. And as a result, these monstrous egos that came about in order to deal with that suppression, whether it’s pain, rage, shame, all these things. And as a result, the lie gets born, and it’s about how far are you willing to go with preserving the lie. And that’s what’s interesting to me, even in terms of his or the sort of recent childish response from White House about the movie and the nominations, is it’s all as long as it pertains to a certain narrative. It’s interesting to see, even among his supporters, just how easy it is to reshape history or reshape certain events that have happened, whether it’s looking at January 6th … It’s really mind-boggling, but it’s so easy, and it’s happened obviously in history. And I think that’s another reason why we have to hold some accountability for the things that are not entirely true and how slippery of a slope it is to buy into that, because everybody else is doing it.
STRONG: I love what you said about to thine own self not be true. And the sort of terrible fruits that that could bear. Not that it’s even an intentional thing. I think they’re both escaping a kind of bottomless void and original trauma.
I did an Ibsen play last year, and reading about Ibsen, in some of the biographies, Ibsen was obsessed with this idea — the Norwegian term translates into the word “life-lie” — the idea that you can live in a kind of delusion. And there’s something about Roy with the stuffed frogs and the Mickey Mouse thing on his door that says “Roy.” He’s a fantasist in a way. Like Peter Pan is a fantasist. And part of that fantasy involves a level of denial of reality. And it’s that self-denial and a denial of what is empirical reality that allows these characters and these men to make reality whatever they want it to be, and make it in their own image. But it’s very, very dangerous when truth becomes malleable the way that Roy Cohn espoused. And I think we’re seeing that happen. Everything’s just turning into spaghetti.
DEADLINE: Each of you did this forensic-level dive into these characters. I’m looking at you, Jeremy, with your hair buzzed after playing Jon Landau, and I’m curious about how both of you managed to preserve yourselves after such a deep dive into these characters of Trump and Cohn. How do you emerge?
STRONG: I actually have no desire to preserve myself. I think, for better or worse, my real desire is to lose myself entirely in it and disappear into it. So depending on the material, you go into these lives for a little while and submerge yourself. And I guess I find that to be the joy of it, to get utterly lost in exploring a psyche and a persona that is not your own until the point that it takes over and sort of possesses you. And at the same time, it’s a game. But it’s like you commit utterly to the game. And I love that Roy also was a pretty gleeful guy. He’s dark. You look at him, and you see something monstrous and you see the heart of darkness. But from inside of him, he actually had a tremendous elan and life force. He loved being Roy Cohn with his Rolls Royce and lunch at Le Cirque. He loved it. So it wasn’t as heavy as one might think.
These shadows that live within us, that we think we can just plaster onto somebody else and be guilt-free … The uncomfortableness of the movie is that it makes the question for evil isn’t necessarily just born, it can also be created. And the truth is somewhere in the middle, and nobody is really spared from that.
Sebastian Stan
DEADLINE: I would find that so threatening to my mental health. Because at some point, you just have to hope that your inner real self rises up out of this other persona.
STRONG: This is a whole other conversation, but I think the idea of a fixed self is illusory. So I think we all have, especially as children, a plasticity of self. I am not sure if there is some core self. We certainly cling to that, but I think it’s interesting to explore the malleability of self.
DEADLINE: Sebastian, what do you think about this idea of such immersion that you let go fully? And how have you managed that?
STAN: I mean, I find it to be very freeing at the end of the day. I almost wish that I could be as courageous within my own life. There are things in life that I’m scared of almost more than what the work demands. I don’t know what that says about me.
I agree with Jeremy that I do feel like we have a spectrum of things that exist within us, and I guess he and I, when I think of actors, you’re like these investigators of all the colors of the human spectrum. I had to remove all judgment I had of this person, and I had to isolate myself to some degree from my friends and my loved ones in my family, because they all had such strong opinions about Trump and what I was doing. The only way I could build a confidence and courage to show up there with him on the day would be to be obsessively going over this and allowing for something to happen on my own without interacting with anyone, because I needed that self-protection. Your brain can judge so quickly and stifle every instinct you have.
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What’s really maybe uncomfortable, and scary, is these people exist in all of us to some extent. There was a Trump in me and there was a Roy in Jeremy. And they can come out. And I think not everybody has the luxury of being able to parent that evolution to some extent, but we do. And I think the takeaway is that you want to show that we’re not all spared from these things that are darker, or these shadows that live within us, that we think we can just plaster onto somebody else and be guilt-free.
STRONG: I think part of the job, and maybe it’s for most things, but certainly for this, Shakespeare says, “This thing of darkness, I acknowledge mine.”
DEADLINE: Tell me about when you first met?
STAN: We met at Le Club. There was a place in New York City called The Nines, which Jeremy suggested we meet at. And in retrospect now, it was very similar to our first meeting [in the film in character]. So I thought that was pretty telling, I suppose. And then the next time, we were in another world.
STRONG: We sort of really met after we were done, and Sebastian came to see my play and we met in my dressing room. But I did take him to The Nines. I made him drink [like Cohn in the film].
You’re in this sort of liminal zone before you start something. I remember thinking, I’m not inside of this thing yet. I have to be in a month from now. I don’t know how that will happen, but I have enough faith at this point that it will happen. We were in this in-between where we were meeting each other. And I think it was important to just connect and say hello.
We didn’t really talk much while we were doing this, but I’ve never had a better experience with another actor in my life. The latitude and freedom and trust that we had, the risks we took together, everything was tandem unicycling on a tightrope over an abyss. I couldn’t have done this without Sebastian. But yeah, that moment I remember very clearly where we were sitting and a feeling of trepidation and of like, “Oh, f*ck. What have we gotten ourselves into here?”
DEADLINE: How do you feel hearing that, Sebastian?
STAN: Genuinely, I feel blessed to been able to have had Jeremy. I mean, I was always a great admirer of his work. When I saw him in everything that he has done, I always felt there was such presence and commitment and energy and force. So yeah, like he said, I was excited, but also trepidatious.
And then obviously, my feeling that Jeremy elevated the work at all costs in every single scene. The element of surprise, that’s what you want out of your partner more than anything. You’re going in there with everything you’ve thought about, but in the end, you want your partner to set you free. And that’s what I feel he does with anybody he works with. Because I think it’s the unpredictability that he comes with from being alive in the moment. And I think that creates something new in me, and then maybe that leads to something new in him. So you always want to have that.
The fact that we were so free with real people, playing real people is really unheard of. It just doesn’t work like that. I mean, at least in my experience with having played real people. I never have —
STRONG: I think we were only able to be free as a result of a tremendous amount of preparation and saturation. And I think if I have a philosophy of acting at all, it’s this thing that he says in Hamlet that “use can almost change the stamp of nature.” That if you apply yourself enough and work hard enough and absorb enough and internalize enough, you can change the stamp of your nature. You can become an authority on Donald Trump and Roy Cohn enough to improvise them and be free within that structure.
DEADLINE: I hope that the roles you’ve had after this have been a kind of palette cleanser? I know that Jon Landau was a beautiful mentor to Springsteen, in contrast to Cohn.
STRONG: Yeah. He lifted me out of the gulch.
STAN: I think finally in March, I’m going to go off to this new thing. But it’s weird to some extent, you go, I guess March 2nd [Oscars], we move on. And we never really do. But it’s hard not to feel like, with this movie in particular, like this has been our child. It’s really like you’re sending them off to college.
STRONG: It’s like Rosemary’s Baby.
STAN: It’s nostalgic. It’s liberating. It’s freeing and yet weird. So it’s a lot of things. But I think that’s when you care. At least I’ve learned going forward, I want to be doing things I care about to that degree.
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