Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, and soon to be 47th, had a presidential run to remember over the course of 2024. The first former president to be convicted of a felony is now the first convicted felon to be elected president, and amid the myriad controversies surrounding his run was a biographical film that opened nationwide in the U.S. on October 11th, less than a month before the polling day.

This film was The Apprentice, a dark drama about Trump’s (Sebastian Stan) business career during the 70s and 80s, alongside infamous prosecutor/ political-fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), who’s relationship with Trump propelled the future president’s status from the shadows of his father to a real-estate tycoon. The movie crucially asserts itself as “a fair and balanced portrait of the former president” based on fact. It was met with great difficulty during its production and development, and eventually struggled to find distribution even after being well received at Cannes. However, the writer and director are looking to send a deeper message to audiences, rather than feed into the political divide.

The Challenges

Screenwriter and journalist Gabriel Sherman was met with difficulty from the start. Clint Eastwood turned down a directorial offer due to how the politics could affect business, and it was then picked up by Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi. The movie itself was largely financed by a good friend of Trump’s, the billionaire Dan Snyder, who endorsed the film under the impression that it was a flattering portrayal of the former president. However, given the purpose of the film is to focus on providing a fair and balanced account of Trump’s psychology as an individual, it offers no bias whatsoever. Trump is shown to rape his wife Ivana, who alleged rape in her divorce deposition (under oath) but later recanted the statement and claimed she didn’t mean for the word to be interpreted in any “literal or criminal sense”, and then in 2016, during Trump’s first presidential campaign, dismissed her previous words as a “story totally without merit”. She said that it was “all just the lawyer’s talk”. However, Trump is a legally defined sexual predator after a Manhattan jury found him guilty of sexual assault and defamation in 2023. Trump also undergoes scalp-reduction surgery, liposuction, and takes amphetamines claiming they’re for his diet, all of which Trump himself has denied in the past.

As expected, initial screenings in February for Snyder were met with intense hostility, and cease-and-desist letters began to be passed, before the production company sold its stake in the film. Then, Trump threatened to stop the film himself, with his lawyers sending a cease-and-desist letters to block the release but never following up on the threat. However, Trump had more than a few words to say about the “FAKE and CLASSLESS” movie upon its release. He asserts it as a “cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job” that he wants to see “bomb”. He calls the writer of the “pile of garbage”, Sherman, a “lowlife and talentless hack”, and the rest of those who worked on the film “HUMAN SCUM”. Trump, soon-to-be president of the United States, expressed his shock that the “scum” were “allowed to say and do whatever they want”, which sounds many alarms for the future of free speech under his presidency. Trump stated himself that the October release date was a deliberate scheme “to try and hurt the Greatest Political Movement in the History of our Country”. However, it didn’t. The film did poorly in the box office, and Trump did win the election. To Abbasi, though, the purpose and longevity of the film is much greater than this election.

The Message.

Abassi also received complaints from those avidly against Trump – “you’re humanising him too much”, is one such comment that Abassi dismissed, saying there is “no such thing” as humanising someone too much. Providing a real, nuanced take on Trump rather than presenting him as the cartoonish villain many view him as was a “complex” challenge for the cast and crew. All the information in the film was pretty much public for “thirty, forty years”, Stan explained, but by presenting it in a movie the audience could really “experience” the information in a way that would impact differently to reading or hearing about it for years on end. The aim of this independent movie that struggled to receive distribution was obviously never to alter the course of the election, which Abassi described as “the most gigantic, money-sucking endeavor of politics in human history”. Instead, they hoped to perform the almost impossible feat in the current political climate of providing a nuanced take on these real people in order to achieve a change of mindset and stray away from even further alienation. Presenting Trump and Cohn as flawed and complex people, but people nonetheless, was a challenge that was vital for Abassi to achieve, as he said that “as dangerous as is the rhetoric of alienating people by saying they’re eating cats and dogs… as dangerous is alienating the other side, so much that people feel it’s legitimate to shoot them”.

Ali Abassi wants you to come away from the film not thinking of Democrats or Republicans, nor about the political system of the United States, but instead about “the whole way you keep and manipulate power in this country”, and the deep underlying flaws in the justice system of the United States.