It’s almost a wonder that there hasn’t yet been a splashy, big-screen Donald Trump biopic. The former president—who could very well be president again come November—is a larger-than-life showman whose highly improbable journey from embattled entrepreneur to leader of the free world (and then, er, back to embattled entrepreneur again) certainly feels ripe for retelling. Yet that’s not quite what Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice, the new Trump-centric film that just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, actually is: Rather, it’s an account of his rise in ’70s and ’80s New York, as precipitated by the lawyer and fixer extraordinaire Roy Cohn.
The story kicks off with their first meeting—an ambitious, fresh-faced Trump (Sebastian Stan) locks eyes with the domineering Cohn (Jeremy Strong) at a swanky members’ club. The former is in a bind—the real estate company he and his father, Fred (Martin Donovan), run is being sued for alleged discrimination against Black tenants—and the latter, intrigued by this inexperienced young chancer, eventually agrees to help him. The case ends in a settlement, but a lifelong friendship is forged, with Cohn taking Trump under his wing and instilling in him the life lessons that, decades later, would have a profound impact on their nation: the notion that you must attack continuously and never accept defeat; that you must admit nothing and deny everything; that the truth is fluid and you can always make your own reality.
Strong is a thrilling, mercurial presence in these early scenes. As Trump mostly sits back and observes, Cohn runs riot, wheeling and dealing, pulling strings, and teaching his protégé how to work a room. Speaking in a sinister monotone, with a malevolent glint in his eyes, the actor sinks his teeth into Cohn’s knottiness—a man who is relentlessly homophobic while also having sex with men; someone who says he almost married Barbara Walters, but decided against it because he didn’t want to risk having to give away half his assets; someone who represents everyone from mafia bosses and moguls to Andy Warhol. (Trump meets the latter at a party in an amusing early moment.)
Strong is let down, however, by an insistent score that too strongly evokes Succession. There’s certainly a throughline from Cohn, by turns grandstanding and profoundly lonely, sipping vodka in his expensive suit at a New York bar, to Kendall Roy, but The Apprentice never comes close to matching the HBO epic’s depth, grandeur, or pathos. To invite the comparison feels somewhat ill-advised.
Still, there’s plenty to enjoy, including a scene-stealing Maria Bakalova as the glamorous and self-assured Ivana Zelníčková, a model who enters Trump’s orbit and quickly becomes his wife and business partner, much to Cohn’s chagrin. Not long after, the power balance between Cohn and Trump begins to shift. Encouraged by the former, the latter pushes on with the construction of Trump Tower, and soon, he’s the one who becomes the toast of New York while Cohn, now pale and bleary-eyed from a battle with AIDS, shuffles around parties in his wake, eager for an audience.
It’s in this portion of the story, as the former apprentice becomes the master, that Stan finally comes into his own. The actor acquires Trump’s tics, now so familiar to us, piece by piece—as Cohn encourages him to embellish tales of his achievements, his manner of speaking becomes more grandiose; as he gains notoriety, there’s a new kind of swagger; and soon you begin to notice the exaggerated hand gestures, the tension he holds in his cupid’s bow, and the emphasis he puts on certain words as he doles out threats.
As for moments which take us beyond the Trump we’re so used to seeing on TV? Well, there are a few. One sequence in which he cries following his brother’s funeral is oddly fascinating to watch—that impenetrable wall of bravado and invincibility collapsing in a way you could never imagine in real life. There’s also another, immediately after Cohn’s death, in which he undergoes liposuction and a scalp reduction to conceal his hair loss, which nails his vanity and solipsism.
Understandably, though, it’s yet another scene that has been dominating the conversations of festival goers, one which depicts a brutal marital rape. By this point in the film, Trump has grown tired of Ivana, and when she gives him a present intended to reignite the spark, he tells her that he’s no longer attracted to her. She then berates his appearance, he grabs her, they tussle, and he throws her to the floor and forcibly has sex with her. (The sequence is a fictionalized account of an incident recorded in Ivana Trump’s 1990 divorce deposition, which was later retracted. “As a woman I felt violated,” she subsequently said. “I referred to this as a rape, but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.” Trump always denied the allegation.)
It’s agonizing to watch, but it ends abruptly and is never mentioned again. When we next see Ivana, she’s still putting on a brave face in public, but it’s clear their marriage is over. Of course, it’s easy to believe that a powerful man may not face consequences immediately (or perhaps ever) for an incident like that, but it’s just one of the many components in the film which make it feel half-baked and unfinished. Beyond the influence of Cohn—who is unceremoniously sidelined in the film’s second half—The Apprentice offers few new insights into the future president, and concludes rather anticlimactically, with a ’80s-era Trump looking to the future.
Naturally, you could argue that the story itself is not finished: we all know what happened next, and what’s still happening now as his hush-money trial rolls on. In a meta twist, Trump has also already found time to threaten legal action against the film, with his campaign communications director Steven Cheung releasing a statement saying that they would be addressing “the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers.” It added: “This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked. 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.”
The resulting kerfuffle will doubtless be good publicity for the film—and while it’s worth watching for the transformative performances, don’t come to it expecting any real revelations. In this case at least, the actual truth is far more gruesomely entertaining than the fiction.
