Made in America: How polarizing biopic “The Apprentice ”charts Donald Trump's origin story

Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong take EW inside the making of a film so controversial, no major Hollywood studio would touch it.

Sebastian Stan didn't become Donald Trump until the helicopter took off.

Moments earlier, before the rotor blades whirled, director Ali Abbasi was getting nervous. After five years of preparation and delays, the Iranian Danish filmmaker was finally rolling on what would become this year's most controversial film, the Trump origin story The Apprentice (in theaters Oct. 11). But when he looked at his star sitting across from Jeremy Strong in character as Trump's notorious mentor, Roy Cohn, he had a sinking feeling something wasn't right.

"I was looking at them like, 'Wow, they look weird, man. Is this going to work?'" Abbasi tells Entertainment Weekly a year later, from Copenhagen. "Then the chopper starts lifting, and I'm like, 'Well, I guess I'm going to find out.'"

Once they were in the air, a transformation occurred that neither Abbasi nor the actors can fully explain. "Suddenly, it started to work," the director says. "And I thought, 'If it's working here, it's probably going to work on the ground, too.'"

"Until you cross that Rubicon, there's a certain measure of dread and uncertainty,'" says Strong, sitting next to Stan at their EW cover shoot last month. "So that, compounded with the fact that we were up in the air precariously in a helicopter, being buffeted around by the wind, was a fitting first day."

Related: Sebastian Stan eerily embodies young Donald Trump in trailer for The Apprentice

"Also, neither of us are really great flyers," Stan admits with a laugh. "But as Donald and Roy, there were no nerves. We didn't even realize that we were in the helicopter."

Strong adds, "It's like putting on a magic cloak."

Making the deal

Like their characters 50 years earlier, the actors first met at a loungy club in New York City. For Strong and Stan, it marked the beginning of a partnership that would culminate in a film so polarizing that no major Hollywood studio would touch it. For the future president and his closest advisor, it was the beginning of a toxic relationship that would change not only their lives but the course of American history.

"If those two hadn't met, everything might be different," Strong says of Cohn and Trump's fateful 1973 encounter, which plays out in the film's opening scenes. "I really think it's that portentous and that significant."

Whether the closeted Cohn was physically attracted to the tall, blond 27-year-old is unclear, though the movie hints that was part of his initial interest that night. Regardless, after helping Trump and his father settle a racial housing discrimination lawsuit with the Department of Justice, the lawyer took the wannabe mogul under his wing, molding him into a living symbol of American wealth and excess. Cohn's three rules for winning — always attack, deny everything, and never admit defeat — remain core tenets of Trump's political playbook.

Looking back on his first meeting with his costar, Stan — chatting again with EW a few days later — now suspects that the Succession Emmy winner, famous for immersing himself in his characters, "purposely selected" a cocktail bar with a similar vibe to Le Club, the former members-only Upper East Side hotspot where Cohn first set his bulbous, pale-blue eyes on the ambitious young real estate scion.

"I remember I sat there, and Jeremy said, 'You want to have a cocktail?' And I said, 'I'm not going to drink because [Trump] doesn't drink,'" the actor recalls. "And he goes, 'Well, you drink with me.'" Stan couldn't argue. As depicted in The Apprentice, Cohn was perhaps the only person capable of pressuring the teetotaling Trump into having a cocktail.

"Right from there, I felt like, 'Okay, we are both going to go for this 100 percent,'" Stan says. "I never saw him out of costume, and he never saw me out of costume. We never really met or spoke outside of the scenes or when we were on set." After they finished filming, Stan went to see his costar's Tony-winning performance of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People on Broadway. When he stopped by his dressing room after the show, Strong says, "I felt like I was meeting him for the first time."

The results of their shared commitment are undeniable. Under the unique direction of the visionary filmmaker behind Holy Spider and Border, and armed with a whip-smart, meticulously researched script by renowned journalist Gabriel Sherman (The Loudest Voice in the Room), the actors disappear completely into their roles. "This sounds like one of these Hollywood clichés, but I really couldn't imagine a better cast," Sherman says.

But when Stan was first approached for the role, the actor couldn't see himself as a young Trump. "It's funny, I felt similarly about a few things I've worked on," he admits. "My initial reaction is, 'Wow, how the hell am I going to do this?'"

This time, his friends and family also had concerns. "I had people tell me not to do it," Stan says. "I had people tell me I don't look like him. I had people tell me that it's not safe for me to do it. I had people say that I shouldn't try to alienate half the country."

Other actors had already passed, "too scared" to take on the challenge, Sherman says. But Stan found the anxiety "weirdly motivating." He attributes this to his "very interesting relationship with fear," which he's learned to use as a guide.

Abbasi also wasn't sure the square-jawed Marvel superhero was the best choice. But when he looked closer at Stan's work, he saw an encouraging pattern. In recent projects, the actor has brought out the humanity in a mind-controlled assassin (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), a hard-partying rocker (Pam & Tommy), and a cannibalistic serial killer (Fresh). "What's so interesting with Sebastian's career is that he has been doing all sorts of not very sympathetic characters," Abbasi says. "But then when you actually see him, when Sebastian does his thing, they become, in a strange way, likable — even if they're douchebags."

Uncovering the humanity in monsters is a skill Abbasi shares with his star. His most recent film, Holy Spider, nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, found fleeting pathos in a fanatical serial killer. His sophomore film, Border, winner of the same festival's Un Certain Regard award in 2018, is a moving love story about literal trolls. "If he could make trolls feel like real characters," Sherman says, "I knew that he would be able to do something really fascinating with Trump."

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While his films can be fantastical, Abbasi — making his English-language debut here — strives to uncover deeper truths in his work. "I love reality. I don't watch that many movies and TV shows anymore," he says. "I watch a lot of YouTube and TikTok to see what I think is a depiction of reality." That approach informed The Apprentice's unique visual style, which evokes news footage from the '70s and '80s. "Roy Cohn's superpower, which he taught to Donald, is the way he handled the media," Abbasi explains. "So it felt fitting to be inspired by those newsreels and the archival footage."

Becoming the Donald

Once Stan was on board, he dove into a rigorous research process. "I have always felt there was something to the man that needed to be heard," he says. "If you do the research, there's a lot that you can understand. I thought about what may have been a driving force in his life, separate from the gimmicks and the lips."

Despite Trump's wealthy upbringing, not everything in his early life was easy. He had a contentious relationship with his domineering father, Fred (played by Martin Donovan), who relished pitting his eldest sons against each other. When Trump was 13, his father found his collection of switchblades (bought after seeing West Side Story) and shipped him off to a military academy known for corporal punishment. When his older brother, Fred Jr. (Charlie Carrick), spurned the family business to follow his dream of becoming a pilot, their father all but disowned him. Years later, after Fred Jr. died from alcoholism at 42, Trump made a rare admission of regret over the way he and his father treated him.

"Normalizing the story and understanding the driving factors that can lead someone on a certain path is what is of value here," Stan says. At the same time, Abbasi points out, "There is a range between having empathy for someone and having sympathy with someone." Sherman kept that in mind while writing his script. "Whatever my subject is, I always strive to find the humanity in them," he says, adding, "but that doesn't mean absolving the character of their flaws."

If there was one quality Stan related to most, it was Trump's innate need to succeed. It's an urge Stan has reckoned with since he immigrated to the United States from Romania at age 12. "I understood that drive to rise, to overcome at whatever cost, and to win. I understood that simply from my own very, very small, humble beginnings with the American dream," he says. "We love a winner in this country. It's a fact that, to me, felt relatable in many ways."

When it came to the physical aspect of becoming Trump, Abbasi says he had a "narrow path to navigate." If he added "10 percent more" prosthetics, it would "look like Saturday Night Live." But if he went 10 percent less, it would "just be Sebastian in a wig." The tinkering continued until the cameras rolled.

"We were getting closer to shooting and hadn't agreed on the prosthetics. That's when Ali said, 'Maybe you should start gaining weight in your face because you're older now, so your cheeks are more hollow, and it's not Marvel,'" Stan recalls with a laugh. So he called a nutritionist. "He was like, 'What I need you to do is get ramen, add a bunch of soy sauce, and start having that.'" The sodium, he said, would puff up Stan's face.

The master

While not as iconic as Trump's signature swoopy hair, pouty lips, and orange glow, Cohn was also known for his singular appearance. He wore flashy suits over his thin frame, had eyes that seemed to bulge from the sides of his scarred face (the result of plastic surgeries gone wrong), and spent too much time in his tanning bed (one of his many quirks that Trump copied).

But Strong opted to keep it simple on the surface. "It has to go beyond something simply mimetic," he explains. "You are trying to render, with a certain level of exactitude, this person, their behavior. In Roy's case, the way he spoke and carried himself physically. But that stuff is all, in a way, cosmetic. The real thing that you grapple with is trying to understand them as best you can and inhabit their struggle. With this, it was peering into the heart of darkness."

As he did with Stan, Abbasi saw in Strong an ability to conjure an inner "grotesqueness" without veering into an impersonation. "Jeremy is, in a way, an unusual actor. Even the other actors think Jeremy is unusual, and they're all weird," Abbasi jokes. "But the unusual thing about Jeremy is that he can be very intellectual and very intuitive at the same time."

Related: Everything to know about controversial Donald Trump film The Apprentice starring Sebastian Stan

In his heyday, Cohn was the most feared attorney in New York — not as much for his legal acumen as for his willingness to do anything to win. He made a name for himself as a young prosecutor in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg spy trial before becoming Senator Joseph McCarthy's right-hand man (as portrayed by Tony winner Will Brill in last fall’s Showtime limited series Fellow Travelers), helping him purge the government of alleged communists and homosexuals — this despite being openly gay among his closest friends. Cohn had famous clients on both sides of the aisle, including George Steinbrenner, Andy Warhol, Aristotle Onassis, and the heads of New York crime families. And yet, by the time he died of AIDS-related complications in 1986, many of his associates, including Trump, had abandoned him.

"There were a lot of really strange things about this guy," Abbasi says. "He was a freak, but also, he was extremely powerful. He was a closeted gay, an anti-intellectual intellectual, a crooked lawyer who knew everyone and anyone, and had a room full of stuffed frogs."

Strong researched Cohn extensively, and while he never got a clear explanation for his frog collection, he did find ways to empathize with a man some consider among the most despicable Americans of his time. "Maybe that's a character flaw of mine," Strong reflects. "But it is a requirement of the work that I do."

Room to play

While The Apprentice is based in fact, improvisation was crucial to Abbasi's vision. "Ali has a very interesting, very unique directing style," Sherman says. "He likes to do really long takes where he won't yell cut. Basically, the actors will do the scene that's on the page, and then he'll see what happens. A lot of times it doesn't work, but then you get these really great moments."

The author cites a scene briefly shown in the trailer as an example. As Trump and Cohn walk through an Atlantic City casino, they pass a crowded buffet that was not in the script. Reacting to his surroundings as Trump might, Stan decided to grab a plate and serve himself a helping of fried cheese balls. "He deserves combat pay for that scene," Sherman jokes. "We did so many takes, he must have eaten 5,000 calories of cheese balls. It was disgusting. I ate one bite and almost wretched."

Opening the door to that kind of improvisation meant the actors had to be "extremely well-read in terms of not just our characters, but also the time period and what was happening in New York," Stan explains. To prepare, he memorized everything from the names of local politicians to the players on the New York Mets over the film's decade-plus time span. "Sebastian always knew that there would come a time when I would ask him to improvise, and he was dreading it," Abbasi says with a grin.

Even Maria Bakalova, who stars as Trump's first wife, Ivana, felt a learning curve. Despite improvising most of her breakout, Oscar-nominated performance in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, she says working with Abbasi was "much different — because with Borat we did a lot of improv, but we were mostly following what people were telling us and adapting in the moment. Ali is interesting because he changes the way you act. He just manages to throw things at you."

Crossing the line

While the film has several moments of levity, it doesn't shy away from its subjects' darkest moments. In a gut-wrenching scene that drew criticism after the film's premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, The Apprentice depicts the future president raping his wife. It's a horrifying episode that the filmmakers believe was necessary to confront head-on.

"I think it was incredibly important to put in the film from a characterological perspective because this movie is really trying to show the roots of where Donald Trump today came from," Sherman argues, adding, "Trump has been credibly accused of sexual assault by multiple women." That includes his ex-wife, who, according to one unconfirmed account, accused her then-husband of rape in a 1990 divorce deposition. While Ivana later denied her initial testimony (she said she felt "violated" but did not mean to be alleging rape "in a literal criminal sense"), Sherman says, "Speaking as a writer, not a journalist, what felt the most emotionally true to me was the statement she made in real time under oath."

"I think it's got a lot of attention because usually people censor those things," Abbasi says of the scene. "My biggest interest is to depict the character in his full complexity, and I think part of that, which is a really important point in the story, is how egocentric Donald becomes. He crosses that line with someone he loved. I don't think that's a scene about sexual assault itself; I think it's a scene about the balance of power and empathy."

"You don't want to show people something like this because it's painful," Bakalova adds. "Things like this should not exist. Unfortunately, they do exist, and when they do exist, you have to shine a light on them." In terms of shooting the scene, the actress says she had the support of a "great team," including intimacy and stunt coordinators. "It all felt safe, but it's still uncomfortable."

The Apprentice has been courting controversy since before it landed a release date. Beyond its most shocking scenes, including visuals of Trump undergoing liposuction and scalp reduction surgery (both of which the former president has denied), some critics have taken issue with how the film attempts to empathize with two men whom many don't believe deserve empathy. "I have heard people say that, and I know what they mean," Strong admits. "There are certain historical figures that you [think], 'Why would you want to see them humanized?'"

"There's also a valid argument to be made in terms of, 'Well, I know what happened. I know what kind of guy he is. I see him all the time,'" Stan adds. "Still, I think there is value in normalizing people that we feel strongly about. And people feel very strongly about him in two different extremes: He's either God's son or he's Lucifer incarnate, and I think we need to bring him back down to earth."

After recently making headlines for suggesting the 45th president isn't as dumb as late-night pundits suggest, Stan now takes the idea a step further. "I think there's a Trump in all of us, to some extent," he says. "I know that might not be a popular thing to say, or people may not want to admit it. And if they have that strong of a reaction to it, they should actually question that reaction."

Abbasi finds the criticism itself concerning. "I think it's dangerous to worry about humanizing people too much," he says. "Also, for me, the movie is not a Trump movie. It's not a Trump biopic. Young Trump is part of it, but the way I see it, the movie is bigger than Trump. It is about the American power system."

Making Hollywood great again

For all its merits and good intentions, The Apprentice is a movie with the unique potential to upset both sides of the political divide. Where some might buck at the idea of seeing Trump as anything less than a monster, others will be loath to see him as anything other than a natural-born winner, let alone the creation of a gay, Jewish socialite.

There's also another elephant in the room. While Sherman has been working on this project for more than seven years, fate has seen fit — with help from a global pandemic and two Hollywood strikes — to deliver it to theaters 25 days before the U.S. election. With Trump, who has already threatened to sue the filmmakers, potentially returning to the White House, what studio would risk getting on his bad side?

In the end, the answer was Briarcliff Entertainment. Founded by Tom Ortenberg, the former CEO of Open Road Films, the distributor swooped in at the last second to shepherd the film into theaters before the election. Throughout his career, the exec says he's targeted films that are provocative, informative, and entertaining. "I think The Apprentice checks all of those boxes," he says, adding that he believes it "has the opportunity to have a large societal impact." While he's thrilled to have acquired the film, Ortenberg says he's surprised that larger studios "were too cowardly" to invest earlier. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised anymore at anybody's cowardice, but it was disappointing to be sure," he says.

"I think our industry has generally become very conservative and toothless," Abbasi adds. "I understand, from a business perspective, not wanting to have trouble, but also, we're not in the business of ice creams. We're not selling shoes."

While the director admits the July assassination attempt on Trump "freaked me out," he stands by his feeling that the film is "fair" and hopes it will prove that some risks are worth taking. "I think we did stuff that a lot of people advised us not to do," he says. "And I really hope that this model of taking chances is rewarded by the audience. Not only for us, but also for the health of this whole ecosystem."

While the cast and filmmakers see the release date — no matter how coincidental — as largely fortuitous for the project, they also recognize the gravity of this election.

Related: The Apprentice is a riveting if familiar account of Donald Trump's years spent at Roy Cohn's knee

"It feels very loaded," Strong says. Beyond the threat Trump poses to democracy, he adds, "The damage he will do to the climate if he's elected will be incalculable, and I actually think irrevocable. That fills me with terror."

Still, as much as they want audiences — including Trump — to see the film, the cast and filmmakers insist they're not trying to change votes. Instead, Stan says he hopes the movie "leads people towards a reconnection with their own humanity." He adds, "It's important to explore the darker elements that live within all of us so that, by bringing them into the light, we can understand how to have a better relationship with them rather than pretending they're not there. We have to have a better, healthier relationship with the beast in all of us."

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Directed by Kristen Harding + Alison Wild

Photography by Danny Kasirye

Motion - DP: Jonathan Chekroune; 1st AC: Andreas Roalsvig; Steadicam Op: Sabrina Marki; Gaffer: Eli Kravitz; BBE: Néha Fernandes; Key Grip: Adela Wagner; BBG: Christopher Mitchell

Production - Set Design: Ward Robinson/Wooden Ladder; Set Team: Isaac Arvold, Bradley Carroll, Mikel Durlam; Styling: Michael Fisher/The Wall Group; Styling Assistant: Brodie Reardon

Photo - 1st Assistant: James Joseph O’Brien 

Post-Production - Color Correction: Nate Seymour/TRAFIK; Finishing: Studio Khimaira; Design: Chuck Kerr; Score: Martin Dirkov

Video Interview - Video Producers: Morgan Sanguedolce, Louis Leuci; DP: Zach Eisen; Cam Op: Jon Cortizo; Audio: Samee Junio; Interviewer: Mike Miller

EW Creative - Photo Director: Alison Wild; Head of Video: Kristen Harding; Creative Director: Chuck Kerr

Sebastian Stan - Hair: Erica Adams/Redefine Representation; Skin: Amy Komorowski/The Wall Group; Full Look: Prada; Watch: Cartier; Socks: London Sock Co

Jeremy Strong - Grooming: Kumi Craig/The Wall Group; Blazer: Loro Piana; Turtle Neck: Tom Ford; Pants: Loro Piana; Shoe: Lanvin; Glasses: Jacques Marie Mage x Jeremy Strong; Additional Coats: Tom Ford

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.