Sebastian Stan Shares Intense Way He Prepared To Play Trump In 'The Apprentice'

Lee Moran

20 September 2024 at 9:18 am·1-min read

Sebastian Stan flooded his phone with Donald Trump imagery in preparation to perfectly capture the former president in his upcoming movie, “The Apprentice.”

“I had 130 videos on his physicality on my phone,” the actor told Variety’s Daniel D’Addario for a lengthy profile published Thursday.

“And 562 videos that I had pulled with pictures from different time periods — from the ’70s all the way to today — so I could pull out his speech patterns and try to improvise like him,” Stan added.

The film — with its slated Oct. 11 release date — centers on Trump’s rise to power in the 1970s and ’80s with help from lawyer Roy Cohn, who is played by Jeremy Strong.

Director Ali Abbasi would frequently ask Stan, mid-filming, to ad-lib as Trump on specific topics, thus requiring Stan to have a level of knowledge of how Trump would respond, and exactly what he would talk and complain about, that was relevant to the time.

“Every night I would go home and try not only to prepare for the day that was coming, but also to prepare for where Ali was going to take this,” Stan recalled.

The film, with its controversial scenes including the depiction of Trump’s alleged rape of his then-wife Ivana Trump (portrayed by Maria Bakalova of “Borat 2” fame) premiered at Cannes and received an 11-minute standing ovation but received criticism from conservatives and Trump’s 2024 campaign.

“This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said at the time.

Read Variety’s full profile here.

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