“The Apprentice” star Sebastian Stan, who portrays a young Donald Trump in the biopic released last month, revealed this week his co-stars and other actors have since distanced themselves from the controversial project out of fear.
The biographical drama, directed by Ali Abbasi, chronicles the early days of the president-elect when he was a rising Manhattan real estate tycoon in the 1970s and ’80s. It also explores his relationship with lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn, played in the film by Emmy-winning “Succession” star Jeremy Strong.
Amid the film’s theatrical rollout in October, Trump trashed the project on social media — calling it “a cheap, defamatory and politically disgusting hatchet job.” He slammed the people involved in the film as “human scum,” and suggested it was strategically “put out right before the 2024 presidential election, to try and hurt the greatest political movement in the history of our country.”
Following the film’s release and Trump’s presidential victory just weeks later, Stan said other actors have been unwilling to publicly discuss the contentious movie or the polarizing figure at the center of it.
During a Q&A about the film in Los Angeles this week, Stan revealed he wasn’t able to participate in an upcoming series for Variety’s “Actors on Actors,” which features one-on-one conversations between actors discussing their work.
“I couldn’t find another actor to do it with me, because they were too afraid to to go and talk about this movie. So I couldn’t do it,” he said earlier this week, as seen in a video shared on social media.
“We couldn’t get past the publicists or the people representing them, because [they were] too afraid to talk about this movie,” the 42-year-old added. “And that’s when I think we lose the situation. Because if it really becomes like that — fear or that discomfort to talk about this — then we’re really going to have a problem.”
Variety Co-Editor in Chief Ramin Setoodeh confirmed Stan’s account.
“What Sebastian said is accurate. We invited him to participate in ‘Actors on Actors,’ the biggest franchise of awards season, but other actors didn’t want to pair with him because they didn’t want to talk about Donald Trump,” he said in a statement to the media.
Despite Trump’s scathing review, Stan previously said he “should be grateful” the film depicts him in a “complex, three-dimensional” way, noting those who worked on the project weren’t interested in “simply vilifying or [demonizing]” the real-life subjects of the movie.
