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    What to Know About ‘The Apprentice,’ the Controversial Trump Biopic

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    The film, now available on demand, followed a thorny path to distribution — including the threat of a lawsuit by its subject.If you know one thing about the new Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice,” it’s likely this: The former president doesn’t want you to see it.The drama, which debuted to mostly positive reviews at the Cannes Film Festival in May, follows a young Trump (Sebastian Stan) as he meets — and falls under the spell of — the lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong); brashly courts, then quickly tires of his first wife, Ivana Trump (Maria Bakalova), and becomes single-mindedly obsessed with winning, at everything, at all costs.Despite praise for Stan and Strong, the film, directed by the Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi and written by the author Gabriel Sherman, struggled to secure distribution, and Trump threatened to file a lawsuit to block its release.But in August, Briarcliff Entertainment, a distributor founded by Tom Ortenberg, a producer on “Spotlight” and “W,” acquired the theatrical rights and announced plans to release the film ahead of the presidential election. After debuting in cinemas on Oct. 10 (again drawing largely positive reviews but just $3.5 million at the box office), it is debuting on demand this weekend.Here’s what to know about the offscreen saga and the onscreen story.What period in Trump’s life does the film cover?It chronicles Trump’s younger years as a New York real estate developer, though the title comes from the TV series Trump later hosted for 14 seasons.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dana Carvey’s Biden Stands Out in a Season of Political Impressions on ‘S.N.L.’

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      The answer has to do with going beyond a likeness, something Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong understand for their movie about Donald Trump and Roy Cohn.Everyone expected Maya Rudolph to appear as Vice President Kamala Harris in the season premiere of “Saturday Night Live.” It was less obvious who would play Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz. But when Jim Gaffigan walked onstage, face split in an open-mouthed grin like some kind of genial jack-o’-lantern, it was clear no one else should have bothered. Gaffigan’s entire comic persona is based in Walzian Big Dad Energy, even if he portrays himself as more likely to sit in his underwear eating Hot Pockets than climbing on the roof to clean out the gutters. There’s a harmony there, a vibe match.There were other interesting matchups — Andy Samberg as Doug Emhoff, James Austin Johnson and Bowen Yang as Donald J. Trump and JD Vance — but those weren’t the performers who stole that night’s show. The shocker, somehow, was an impersonation of President Biden, a performance so spot-on that for a split second I thought Lorne Michaels had just called the president and asked him to appear.This Biden was Dana Carvey, the former cast member whose work on “S.N.L.” includes perhaps the show’s greatest presidential impression, a strange and brilliant take on George H.W. Bush. Carvey’s Biden squints and chuckles, says “folks” a lot and is given to insisting that he’s “being serious right now,” even when what he’s just said — “I’ve passed more bills than any president in history, but we’ve still got a lot of work to do” — would never be mistaken for a joke. This Biden felt less like an attempt to replicate the president and more like a guess at what he’s feeling these days.Judging from social media discourse — and from this parade of imitations in the season premiere, each cued up for maximum applause and surprise — political impressions have never been more interesting even to those who don’t care about “S.N.L.” There’s no obvious reason for this intrigue, other than the novelty of watching one kind of celebrity play a different kind of celebrity, the same interest that powers a lot of awards-season movies in which great stars try to win awards by playing other famous people. See “The Apprentice,” in which Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan portray Roy Cohn and Trump.In fact, the earliest stars of “S.N.L.” are now the subject of their own impersonations, in Jason Reitman’s new “Saturday Night.” Some are more successful than others. But what’s obvious from the better performances (Cory Michael Smith’s version of Chevy Chase, Dylan O’Brien’s Dan Aykroyd) is what’s also clear from Carvey’s impression of Biden: playing real people can’t just consist of perfectly imitating their exterior. And the goal can’t just be to make the audience marvel at a remarkable likeness.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Apprentice’ Review: An Origin Story for Donald J. Trump

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      In this ribald fictional telling of a young Trump’s rise, the man responsible is the lawyer Roy Cohn, played to sleazy perfection by Jeremy Strong.Midway through “The Apprentice,” a gleefully vulgar fictional dramatization of the loves and deals of the young Donald J. Trump, the movie’s look changes. From the start, the images have had the grainy quality that you sometimes see in films from the 1970s, which is when the movie opens. Then suddenly, while Donald — a terrific Sebastian Stan — is giving a TV interview in 1980, faint horizontal lines begin slicing across the image, evoking the flicker in analog video. It’s a sly nod at the future and a brand-new reality: A (television) star is born.“The Apprentice” is arriving in theaters less than a month before the U.S. presidential election, but it would be a strain to call this energetic, queasily funny if finally very bleak portrait an October surprise. The real Trump’s reaction to the movie suggested that it had the makings of a bombshell, though the most shocking parts of the movie have been reported elsewhere. His campaign called it “garbage” the day after its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, and his lawyers sent a cease and desist letter to the filmmakers. Yet the only news here — and, really, the greatest surprise — is how thoroughly this ribald, at times predictably unflattering movie humanizes its protagonist, a classic American striver.In broad strokes, “The Apprentice” recounts a familiar story of individual empowerment and (gilded) bootstraps through Donald, who hungers for the very best, or at least shiniest, that life can offer, be it women, clothing, swank digs or amber waves of hair. Like the hero in a Horatio Alger tale, except with, you know, family money and connections, Donald finds success partly through his association with a slithery lawyer, Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong, fantastic), who was Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s chief counsel during the Senate’s 1950s investigations into Communist influence in the United States. Roy becomes Donald’s mentor, helping him achieve his American dream that here has the makings of a nightmare.The director Ali Abbasi thrusts you right in the scrum, opening on Donald as he navigates the outwardly mean, trash-choked streets of Times Square. It’s 1973, and New York seems to be on the ropes. Parts of the city look like they’ve been bombed, and its rats are on the march. It’s tough out there, even for ambitious go-getters. Yet Donald, who’s in his late 20s and works for the Trump family’s sprawling real-estate business — he knocks on residential tenant doors to personally collect the rent — has grandiose plans to revive the struggling city and make his fortune by giving a hulking, rundown Midtown hotel a classy makeover.Donald’s aspirations for that hotel, the Commodore, become the first in a series of ladder rungs he grasps on his upward climb through the 1970s and into the go-go ’80s. Working from a script by Gabriel Sherman, Abbasi tracks Donald’s high points and low on his transformational journey, which takes him from testy meals in his parents’ Queens home and into Manhattan’s corridors of power, its boardrooms and party dens. Whether in the back seat of a stretch limo or riding along with Roy Cohn in a Rolls, Donald is on the make and on the move. (Sherman wrote “The Loudest Voice in the Room,” a biography of the Fox News executive Roger Ailes; Abbasi’s directing credits include “Holy Spider.”)Donald’s path, as it were, proves grim and glittering by turns, and is lined with shrewd wheedling, outlandish excesses, sketchy characters and anguished family drama. There’s also somewhat of a fork in his road, symbolized by his relationship with Roy and his romance with a feisty, skeptical Czech model, Ivana (an appealing Maria Bakalova). The movie suggests that Ivana is good for Donald and maybe a potential lodestar, but he’s in thrall to Roy and to his father, Fred (an unrecognizable Martin Donovan). A tyrant who berates his grown children at the family dining-room table, especially his eldest son, Freddy (Charlie Carrick), Fred is the father Donald conspicuously fears and whom he trades in for Roy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong Say ‘The Apprentice’ Is a ‘Human Tragedy’

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      It’s natural to feel nervous before presenting your movie at a major film festival. But in late August, when the director Ali Abbasi boarded a flight to the Telluride Film Festival, he wasn’t even sure if his new movie “The Apprentice” — a fictionalized look at the Machiavellian bond between the young Donald J. Trump (Sebastian Stan) and the lawyer and fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) — would be permitted to play there at all.“It was really crazy what happened, and I spared Jeremy and Sebastian some of it, but it is a demoralizing feeling,” Abbasi admitted during a recent video call with his two stars. The former president had been threatening legal action against “The Apprentice” since its May debut at the Cannes Film Festival, which chilled distributor interest in the movie for months and made it a controversial prospect for any subsequent festival willing to show it.“If a movie comes out and people think it’s bad or it’s flawed, you can deal with that,” Abbasi said. “But when it goes into a safe box indefinitely, that was heavy.”In the end, Trump failed to follow through on his threats, Telluride played the movie without incident and “The Apprentice” ultimately found a distributor in Briarcliff Entertainment, which will release the film on Friday. Still, Strong was perturbed by how many major studios were unwilling to take on the film and potentially incur the presidential candidate’s wrath.“You think that things could be banned in North Korea or Russia or certain places, but you don’t think that will ever happen here,” Strong said. “It’s a real dark harbinger that it even nearly happened.”Written by Gabriel Sherman, “The Apprentice” begins with Trump in his 20s as he toils under his real-estate magnate father and aspires to become a momentous figure in his own right. Still, Trump’s ambition exceeds his ability until he meets the savvy Cohn, who takes the young man under his wing and imparts ruthless rules for success that will eventually launch Trump onto the highest stage imaginable.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Biopic Hits Cannes Film Festival: ’The Apprentice’

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      The film covers Donald J. Trump’s relationships with the fixer Roy Cohn and his first wife, Ivana, and tries to explain the future president, at least as a young man.Would Donald J. Trump enjoy Cannes? It’s possible, since the extravagant displays of wealth here — all the yachts and glamour — are typically his thing.But would Cannes enjoy Donald J. Trump?You might be tempted to say no, since the Cannes Film Festival draws the sort of liberal-leaning artists that reliably vote against the former president and his allies. But that clash of sensibilities lent a frisson to Monday’s premiere of “The Apprentice,” starring Sebastian Stan as a young Trump.Directed by Ali Abbasi (“Border,” “Holy Spider”) and written by the author Gabriel Sherman, this origin story of sorts begins with Trump in his late 20s as he aspires to greatness but mostly putters around collecting overdue rent for his father’s real estate company. (One angry tenant responds by hurling a pot of boiling water at him.) Trump is a man in need of a mentor, and he finds it in the lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), who takes an immediate liking to this young striver. And why wouldn’t they spark to each other? On one visit, Trump hops out of a car emblazoned with the license plate “DJT” and sees that Cohn’s own plate reads “RMC.” Game recognizes game.The closeted Cohn character has complicated reasons for keeping Trump close: There’s a one-sided attraction there, and when giving Trump an expensive suit, he tells the younger man, “If you look like a million bucks, I look like a million bucks.” But mostly, he sees Trump as an appreciative vessel for his lessons in venality. Cohn teaches him how to use dirty tricks to succeed in business and imparts three rules that will become Trump’s modus operandi: Always be on the attack, deny everything and never admit defeat.But in its own way, theirs is a “Star Is Born” dynamic: As Trump rises, Cohn falls on harder times, and the protégé who was once so easily impressed now seems sickened to spend time with someone no longer on his level. By the time we reach the 1980s, Trump has married his first wife, Ivana (Maria Bakalova), and broken ground on his crowning real estate achievement, Trump Tower. Still, Cohn won’t be dispatched from his high-flying life quite so easily.Is the movie sympathetic to Trump? Not exactly, though it labors to at least explain him. At first, Stan’s performance feels surprisingly toned down: Though young Trump is certainly full of himself, he seems more abashed in Cohn’s outsize presence. But as Trump gets hooked on success (and speedlike diet pills), Stan transforms into the man we know today, who leads with bluster and arrogance. “The Apprentice” suggests he’s little more than a MAGA magpie, stealing his famous “Make America Great Again” phrase from a Reagan operative and even modeling his orange complexion on Cohn, who liked to tan himself to a radioactive umber.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More