Spoiler alert! The following story contains major details about Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice” (now in theaters).
Weeks before a nail-biting U.S. election, director Ali Abbasi is dropping a cinematic grenade into theaters.
“The Apprentice” is a polarizing biopic of young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan), portraying him as a New York slumlord who becomes a ruthless real-estate mogul under the tutelage of closeted gay lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). The film is written by political journalist Gabriel Sherman, who covered Trump’s 2016 presidential election and learned about the duo’s poisonous dynamic.
“People who have known Trump since the 1980s told me that Donald was using both the techniques and words that Cohn taught him,” Sherman says. “That’s really when the inspiration for the movie came about, thinking about the ghost of Roy Cohn inhabiting the body of Donald Trump.”
Trump’s campaign will file a lawsuit against the filmmakers, Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, told Variety and Deadline. Cheung added that the movie is “pure malicious defamation” and “should not see the light of day.”
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Here’s what’s fact and fiction in the new film:
Did Donald Trump have a ‘homoerotic’ relationship with Roy Cohn?
As portrayed in the movie, Trump and Cohn really did meet in 1973 at a members-only club in Manhattan. They got to talking and Cohn agreed to represent the Trump family in a housing discrimination lawsuit. From there, Cohn took him under his wing and taught Trump his cutthroat ways.
“There clearly was a father-son dynamic to their relationship,” Sherman says. “On another level, there was a homoerotic subtext. One of the things I found in my research is that a lot of Roy’s lovers were young, blond, blue-eyed men who bore a striking resemblance to young Donald. I think Roy was attracted to Trump, in a way, and this movie is sort of a love story.” In the film, for instance, “we see that Donald is going to get married, which really breaks Roy’s heart.”
‘Apprentice’:Sebastian Stan became Trump by channeling ‘Zoolander,’ eating ‘a lot of sushi’
Did Donald Trump get jealous of first wife Ivana’s success?
Trump met Czech model Ivana Zelníčková in New York in 1976, and they married the next year. The movie shows her media savvy, and how she became the face of many of the Trump Organization’s most prominent ventures.
“They were definitely competitive; they were business partners,” Sherman says. “She was the manager of his casino in Atlantic City, and had a big role in the company. And she was becoming famous: New York magazine put her on the cover. Trump wasn’t happy about that, so they were becoming rivals.”
In another scene at home, Trump struggles to make infant Don Jr. stop crying, joking that he’s “terrible with babies.” That’s based on “an interview Trump gave where he talked about how he never changed a diaper, and wasn’t a ‘get on the floor and play’ kind of dad,” Sherman says. “That was by his own admission. He didn’t really connect with his young children until they were old enough to start working for his business.”
Did Ivana Trump accuse Donald of raping her during their marriage?
In the movie’s most stomach-churning scene, Donald tells Ivana that he’s no longer attracted to her, to which she retorts that he is fat and balding. Donald throws Ivana to the floor and climbs on top of her, proceeding to sexually assault his wife as she screams for him to stop.
The alleged rape is taken from a court deposition “that Ivana gave under oath during her 1990 divorce,” Sherman says. “In fact, the scene she described in the divorce papers was actually far more graphic and brutal than the one we dramatized in the film.” (Ivana later recanted her rape allegation in 2015 amid his first presidential campaign; she died in 2022 at age 73.)
The scene has sparked controversy, with Trump himself threatening the filmmakers with a cease-and-desist letter trying to block the movie’s release. But Sherman says he would have “thrown myself on the train tracks to keep that scene in the film,” given the numerous allegations of sexual misconduct against the ex-president, all of which he’s denied.
“I couldn’t stand behind a movie that didn’t explore Trump’s misogyny,” Sherman says. “I needed the film to engage with that, and this scene is the most powerful and visceral way. Sexually assaulting somebody you love is such a transgression. Dramatically, it showed the depth to which Donald Trump had sunk at that point in the story.”
Did Donald Trump really express regret over his brother’s death?
“Apprentice” depicts Trump falling into a deep depression after the sudden death of his older brother, Fred Jr., who was ostracized by their father and struggled with alcoholism. (He died of a heart attack in 1981 at age 42.) Trump’s hostility going forward was a “dramatic interpretation,” Sherman says, although the ex-president has said in interviews that he regrets not doing more to help support his sibling.
“That was a real blow for him when Freddy died,” Sherman says. “That’s a moment in the script when Donald Trump really loses some of the last pieces of his humanity. He was never quite the same after that; he buries a lot of his emotions and pushes them down.”
Did Donald Trump actually betray Roy Cohn?
Cohn died in 1986 of AIDS complications at age 59. Shortly before his death, Trump invited him down to his Palm Beach, Florida, residence for a farewell dinner, where he gifted Cohn fake diamond cuff links.
“That’s all true,” Sherman says. “A lot of scenes in this movie seem so crazy that you think maybe a screenwriter invented them, but there’s actually a record of them happening.”
As shown in the film, Cohn really did show remorse for mentoring Trump. “Wayne Barrett, a longtime investigative reporter for the Village Voice, quoted Roy saying how betrayed he felt,” Sherman says. “Trump distanced himself from Roy as he was dying from AIDS, and Wayne quoted Roy saying, ‘I can’t believe he’s doing this to me. Donald pisses ice water.’ When I read that, it chilled me; I knew I had the ending of my movie.
“If a brutal guy like Roy Cohn can feel betrayed by Trump, what does that say about Donald?”
Did Donald Trump really have liposuction and a hair transplant?
In her divorce deposition, Ivana claimed that Donald flew into “a fit of rage” due to the pain of a 1989 scalp reduction procedure. (“Also known as alopecia reduction, the surgery is intended to correct balding,” Vanity Fair reports.) The alleged operation was performed by Dr. Steven Hoefflin, whom Ivana also purports to have done liposuction on Donald’s chin and waist, according to Vanity Fair.
“Apprentice” shows the ex-commander in chief undergoing both procedures in the movie’s last moments. “It’s a visual metaphor of the Frankenstein monster: the final piece of the monster being made,” Sherman says. “But also, it’s the first time in the entire movie that Sebastian looks and acts and speaks like a present-day Donald Trump. The liposuction and hair transplant are the physical manifestation of the Trump we know now.”
If you are a survivor of sexual assault, RAINN offers support through the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE and online.rainn.org).
