‘The Apprentice’ producers say their film is ‘definitively not a hit piece’ on Donald Trump

When “The Apprentice” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last May, it received an eight-minute standing ovation and most industry insiders assumed it would easily secure US distribution as a major awards contender. The film from director Ali Abbasi tells the story of how a young Donald Trump (played by Sebastian Stan) started his real-estate business in 1970s and ’80s New York with the helping hand of infamous lawyer Roy M. Cohn (played by Jeremy Strong).

Soon after its Cannes premiere, Trump’s lawyers sent the filmmakers a cease and desist letter in hopes of blocking the movie from appearing in US theaters. There were no grounds to stop it from showing on screens, but the controversy was enough to scare off many studios who weren’t interested in potential lawsuits from the former (and now re-elected) president. Eventually, Briarcliff Entertainment secured domestic distribution rights and nothing ever came of those threats from Trump’s camp.

“It was extraordinarily satisfying. Certainly more than any other movie I’ve worked on,” says “The Apprentice” producer Amy Baer, who spoke to Gold Derby with her colleague Daniel Bekerman. “To me, the measure of success was actually getting it in theaters. That was a huge accomplishment for us.”

Bekerman adds, “The truly satisfying thing was that it truly wasn’t what anyone expected. We had people like Roger Stone, on the Trump side of the equation, saying that he thought that Jeremy’s performance of Roy Cohn was ‘exactly spot on,’ and people on the other side of the spectrum also loving it. It also frustrated some people because it didn’t fit their expectations, that’s okay too. The film has something to say, despite the volume of noise and content about the subject matter, we really did have something new to say and new to add. People who have seen it agree with that and it’s clear it’s going to have an ongoing life because of that.”

The producers say the script from Gabriel Sherman “always had a modicum of empathy for both of its main characters.” Baer calls that “the film’s strength and the thing that also scared a lot of people about it.” She states, “I remember in the early days when we were first putting it together, a lot of people in town were very uncomfortable with reading it and feeling empathy, and at least understanding who these two men were. At least Donald Trump, because he’s still very much in our zeitgeist. I think what was so extraordinary about it was their performances, and Ali’s ability to really walk that line and make sure the audience understood where these two people were coming from as humans. I also think the way Ali evoked New York in the late ’70s is very authentic.”

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Baer says Stan was the perfect actor to play Trump, stating, “On a very superficial level, we wanted someone who was both good-looking and a great actor. Donald was very good-looking in his youth, and was considered very good-looking and an eligible bachelor. Sebastian is a still water that runs very deep. A lot of people look at his work in ‘Gossip Girl’ and Bucky Barnes, but the reality is, if you look at the breadth of his work, he is pretty fearless when it comes to taking on deeper, edgier, more interesting roles. He’s also not afraid to play real people. So, it was a combination of elements that made him the right person for it.” She continues, “There were actors that were just unwilling to go there, and Sebastian was always intrigued by it. The thing that made him feel a little bit of trepidation was the thing that made him want to be that character. He worked tirelessly for two years.”

For the role of Cohn, Bekerman says, “Jeremy is just exciting. It was exciting to watch in the movie, it was exciting to watch on set. I think what Jeremy brought to Roy, whatever people think about Donald Trump and whether they like him or not, Roy is not thought of as a particularly likable guy. And yet, Jeremy brought humanity to it as Sebastian brought to Donald. The humanity that they brought, and that was in the script, actually is what makes the movie subversive. That’s something that none of our political discourse is doing. Our political discourse is all about dehumanizing each other, specific groups in different cases. Dehumanizing is the tool that politics uses to create drama and anger. For us to approach this subject matter with a dedication to not dehumanize makes it deeply subversive. People might not know what to think of that at first because of that. It opens up things you just don’t think about if all you’re watching is the usual partisans online and on cable news.”

The producers brush off critics who call the movie a “hit piece” on Donald Trump. “I don’t think there’s anyone who’s seen the film who thinks it’s a hit piece,” Baer says. “It is, in some ways, holding up a mirror to American culture, but it is definitively not a hit piece. The daringness and the subversiveness of it is that we didn’t want to make a hit piece. We wanted to make a movie about two human beings who cast a long shadow on our culture, both domestically and around the world. The only way to heal as a culture and move forward is to understand it, as opposed to demonizing it. For so long, that is what the public discourse has been, was to demonize the other. That is not what we’re interested in doing.”

Bekerman adds, “That doesn’t mean that humans, represented fairly, don’t do terrible things. There’s a tragic aspect to this story. It may be about the loss of humanity.”