The Apprentice: Why Donald Trump Is Threatening To Sue Sebastian Stan's New Film
Donald Trump, the former President of the United States, subject of various indictments, and star of "Home Alone 2," is apparently quite upset about a movie that just premiered at Cannes.
Variety reports that Trump's chief spokesperson for his presidential campaign, Steven Cheung, released a statement to the outlet saying that they plan to take legal action over Ali Abbasi and Sebastian Stan's film "The Apprentice," which chronicles some of Trump's earlier years in New York. "We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers," Cheung said. "This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked. As with the illegal Biden Trials, this is election interference by Hollywood elites, who know that President Trump will retake the White House and beat their candidate of choice because nothing they have done has worked."
That's already a pretty ... intense statement, but Cheung continued by explaining what the campaign (and presumably the candidate) hope happens to Abbasi and Stan's movie. "This 'film' is pure malicious defamation, should not see the light of day, and doesn't even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store, it belongs in a dumpster fire," the spokesperson concluded.
What is The Apprentice, and why is Donald Trump so angry about it?
So what exactly is "The Apprentice," and why is one of the two men running for President of the United States so mad about it that he and his team threatening a lawsuit (and releasing relatively incendiary statements)? Well, the title may clue you in considering that it's a reference to Donald Trump's NBC reality show of the same name and tells the story of Trump's life as a major real-estate developer in Manhattan. Marvel Cinematic Universe mainstay Sebastian Stan plays the man himself, while Maria Bakalova — who earned an Academy Award nomination for her supporting role in "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm" — plays his first wife, Ivana Trump (who, in real life, passed away in 2022). Jeremy Strong, the Emmy-winning Method actor who spent four seasons as Kendall Roy on "Succession," also plays a major role as real-life figure Roy Cohn, the New York "fixer" who worked with Senator Joseph McCarthy and courted controversy until his death in 1986.
The movie definitely doesn't paint Trump in a flattering light, according to early buzz from the Cannes Film Festival. When it premiered on the Croisette during the festival, moviegoers were appalled by a scene where Trump sexually assaults his wife Ivana, and elsewhere in the film, he has liposuction, gets a surgical procedure to deal with a bald spot on his head, and takes amphetamines. Trump may be threatening a lawsuit over the film, but it already got released despite strenous objections from one of its backers ... so who knows if the former President's legal action will actually go anywhere.
"The Apprentice" does not have a theatrical release date as of this writing.