Yahoo Lifestyle ‘The Apprentice’ Star Maria Bakalova Didn’t Stay in Character as Ivana Trump Off the Set: ‘That Could Have Affected My Mental Health’
The Iron Curtain had already collapsed when Maria Bakalova was growing up in Bulgaria, but old sensibilities still lingered: as a girl she was discouraged from playing the “aggressive and muscular” electric guitar (she learned the flute instead) and life there was still largely circumscribed by national borders.
But Bakalova, who portrays the Czech-born Ivana Trump in “The Apprentice,” found avenues for expansion, in part, as a way of rebelling. “It didn’t feel right to be put in a box because of your gender,” says Bakalova, who burst on the scene with her Oscar-nominated performance in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.” “Knowing I didn’t get a chance to pursue something had some impact on my development and maybe made me stronger and a bit more daring.”
More from Variety
Bakalova’s first path out was singing, and by age 11, she was traveling throughout Western Europe to competitions, much as Ivana Trump had gotten out via national ski teams. “In countries like ours, music and sports were the only options for traveling,” Bakalova says. “Seeing the world opened my eyes.”
After injuring her vocal cords at 11, she turned to literature for escape, though she was not devouring YA fantasies. “I started with what we had at home,” she says, referring to Chekov, Pushkin and her favorite, Dostoevsky. “He became my first love in literature. Then came Gabriel Garcia Márquez, where the magical realism gave me this weird feeling of escapism.” She loved “The Portrait of Dorian Gray” as a tween before moving on to Jorge Luis Borges and Nabokov.
“The novels made me dream I can even go places that don’t actually exist,” she says. This led her to act on stage and then on screen, which was an antidote for her social awkwardness. “I was too shy to even say my name out loud to start friendships. Being somebody else let me open up and become more communicative.”
These days, Bakalova, who lights up discussing books perhaps even more than acting, seems comfortable and loquacious. She says all her artistic passions made her more empathetic but also more “fierce” and able to deal with life’s unpredictable nature.
She brought those traits to the wild ride of “Borat” and “The Apprentice,” the latter of which depicts Ivana as ambitious and strong enough to stand up to The Donald. Bakalova, who typically dresses in baggy sweats, auditioned in full Ivana hair and makeup; those touches and the long nails, she says, helped her find the character.
“I don’t wear a lot of dresses or makeup, so I didn’t know if I had the femininity and flirtatiousness but also the coldness,” says Bakalova. “I wanted to be convincing for myself. The moment you get nails, you use your hands more and when you have big hair and makeup you don’t touch your hair or face as much as you become more self-conscious of your appearance.”
While she says Jeremy Strong stayed in character as Roy Cohn during filming and Sebastian Stan held onto some of Trump, she only kept the accent, shedding the rest of the character off set. “That could have affected my mental health,” she says.
Bakalova’s two most notable scenes are when Ivana takes on Donald and Roy in a battle over a prenup, forcing the two bullies to back down, and later when Trump, who is shedding his humanity, turns a marital argument into a brutal rape.
While she acknowledges that she cannot fully understand what Ivana went through in the rape scene, it was still “scary” to play. But she praised director Ali Abbasi and Stan. “We had a team of gentle and kind human beings,” she says. “We rehearsed and physically blocked it weeks before we shot it and then had an intimacy coordinator, a stunt coordinator and a closed set to make sure it was a safe scene.”
Abbasi sought to minimize the number of takes, but Bakalova says she pushed for one more. “It’s a very slippery, tricky place — that how far you should go and how far can you go,” she says, adding that she did have dreams about the rape after filming. “But it’s important to do it with respect and depth because women who have gone through this are survivors. It’s important to open a conversation and talk about this.”
Best of Variety
Sign up for Variety's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.