Yahoo Lifestyle After Sebastian Stan Revealed He’d Been Shunned By His Fellow Actors For Starring In A Movie That Portrayed Donald Trump In A Negative Light, He Has Opened Up About The “Disappointing” Experience
Back in November, people were stunned to learn that nobody would pair with Sebastian Stan for the most recent round of Variety’s Actors on Actors.
In case you didn’t know, Actors on Actors first launched in 2014, and episodes have two stars come together for an extended conversation about their most recent projects ahead of awards season. Over the years, it has given us some pretty iconic pairs, including Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Lopez, and Cillian Murphy and Margot Robbie.
Sebastian starred in two critically acclaimed movies last year: A Different Man and The Apprentice. In the latter, Sebastian plays President-elect Donald Trump, and this is apparently what blocked every other star taking part in Actors on Actors from teaming up with him.
The biopic examines Trump’s life and career in the 1970s and 1980s, and includes several controversial scenes — including one that shows Trump raping his first wife, Ivana.
For reference, Trump was very vocally against this movie, and Variety previously reported that Steven Cheung — the communications director of Trump’s presidential campaign — attempted to block the film earlier in the year.
Trump’s attorneys reportedly issued a cease-and-desist letter due to the negative way that he is portrayed. At the time, the film’s producers responded by saying: “The film is a fair and balanced portrait of the former president. We want everyone to see it and then decide."
Trump himself described The Apprentice as "a cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job" and called everybody involved in the project “human scum.”
And Sebastian exposed the industry’s response to the movie during a Los Angeles screening alongside the film’s director, Ali Abbasi, in November.
“The amount of love that I’ve received from some of the biggest, in terms of actors, directors, producers, and writers, who have seen the movie, and they rave about it,” Sebastian began. “But then, for instance, I had an offer to do Variety Actors on Actors this Friday, and I couldn’t find another actor to do it with me.”
“They were too afraid to go and talk about this movie, so I couldn’t do it,” he went on. “And it doesn’t matter, that’s OK. It’s not to point a finger at anybody — I’ve got to do a lot of great things.”
The star then clarified: “That’s not pointing at anyone specific; we couldn’t get past the publicists or the people representing them because they were too afraid to talk about this movie.”
“That’s when, I think, we lose the situation,” Sebastian continued. “If it really becomes that fear or that discomfort to talk about this, we’re really going to have a problem. There was an op-ed that came out, I sent to [Ali], in the New York Times recently that I thought was really interesting, it was: ‘We have to stop pretending that Trump is not one of us.’”
“That’s a really difficult thing to deal with at the moment, and I understand emotions are very high, but I think that’s the only way you’re going to grasp this film — all it’s saying is you cannot keep casting this person aside, especially after they got the popular vote,” he added. “Should we not give this a closer look and try to understand what it is about this person that’s even driving that?”
Needless to say, social media users were left horrified by the way that Sebastian had been excluded by his fellow stars, with some theorizing that the publicists involved feared their clients would face repercussions from Trump himself if they discussed the movie with Sebastian.
Now, in a new interview with Variety, Sebastian was asked about the fact that he was “invited to take part” in Actors on Actors, but they “couldn’t get [him] the right pairing.”
Speaking on the publication’s Awards Circuit podcast, Sebastian admitted that he had been “disappointed” by the response from his fellow actors as he explained that he’d really enjoyed his past experience on the show.
The star also pointed out that they could have just discussed his other movie, A Different Man, if The Apprentice was too contentious, as he once again reiterated the fact that many people from the industry had privately shared their admiration for the film but proved to be hesitant to support it publicly.
“I mean, it was disappointing because I remember I had an amazing experience with Jennifer Aniston when we did Pam & Tommy, and I love Actors on Actors,” Sebastian began. “It’s an opportunity to learn about someone else's process, and if you look at the performances this year, I feel like I have so many questions for people.”
“Also, I had A Different Man, too, like, we could have…” the star then trailed off, before confessing: “But it wasn’t entirely surprising because that’s what I was trying to say [in November].”
“From Cannes on, you know, all of us have gotten emails and texts and incredible messages or been approached by people at events or parties saying: ‘Hey, this is my favorite movie of the year, wow, you guys are incredible, you did so great, I’m blown away, you’re so brave, so this,’ you know?” Sebastian went on.
“And we're like: ‘Wow, OK, maybe it is connecting with people, and people that you admire and you’ve grown up loving and emulating within the industry,’” he continued. “But when it came to — whether it was a CEO or a studio head — a fellow actor or director taking a stand publicly, or even just to say: ‘Hey, I saw this film, it was great from a work standpoint…’ that hesitancy was there.”
“Actors on Actors kind of was just another example of that,” he concluded. “It wasn’t necessarily the point of a finger at all to anybody.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Sebastian said that The Apprentice was “the hardest thing” he has “ever done,” adding: “Not just because of the complexities of playing Trump, but because of the reaction it provokes.”
“I had people telling me not to do it,” he confessed. “They said it might alienate people, that I didn’t look like him, that it was too dangerous. But for me, acting is about going toward the uncomfortable… About trying to understand humanity, even in the darkest places.”
And discussing Trump more broadly, Sebastian said: “He’s given people permission to lose their humanity — to behave in ways they wouldn’t have before. And that’s what scares me the most. The opposite of love isn’t hate — it’s indifference. And I worry about the indifference we’re seeing now.”
What do you make of nobody pairing with Sebastian for Actors on Actors? Let me know in the comments!
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