The first clip from the Donald Trump biopic that left a startling, if controversial, mark on the 2024 Cannes Film Festival has finally arrived.
Ali Abbasi’s film The Apprentice stars Sebastian Stan as Trump and Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn, the notoriously dogged prosecutor who served as the real estate mogul/future president’s mentor. The film follows their relationship during the Seventies and Eighties, exploring the ways Cohn — a veteran of the McCarthy-era communist witch hunts — helped shape Trump into the bombastic, headline-grabbing, trash-talking master of deflection we’re all too familiar with now.
In his review of the film from Cannes, Rolling Stone’s David Fear described The Apprentice as a kind of Frankenstein remake “in which a mad scientist plays Pygmalion and watches his creation turn into a monster.” The new scene released today captures an early moment in that transformation.
In the clip, Trump takes an interview on a car phone in a limousine, brushing off a recent legal issue and playing up his next big real estate purchase. While he talks, an increasingly frustrated Cohn tries to direct his performance. Not happy with the results, he takes the phone back, hangs up, and when Trump tries to apologize, Cohn gives him a withering, “I mean, listen, it’s your life. You got a ways to go, but you’re learning.”
The Apprentice is set to hit select theaters on Oct. 11. It first premiered at Cannes back in May, and though it received largely positive reviews, it also garnered significant controversy for a scene in which Trump rapes his then-wife, Ivana (played by Maria Bakalova). Trump’s lawyers also sent a cease-and-desist letter to the producers of the film, calling it “pure malicious defamation” that “belongs in a dumpster fire.”
The producers of the project stood by The Apprentice, calling it “a fair and balanced portrait of the former president. We want everyone to see it and then decide.” Abbasi even offered to screen the movie for Trump, saying, “I don’t necessarily think that this is a movie he would dislike. I don’t necessarily think he would like it. I think he would be surprised, you know?”