Former President Donald Trump lost out on Truth Social over the new film The Apprentice, which was released Friday and depicts him as a young man.
The film stars Sebastian Stan and features controversial scenes, including one in which Trump sexually assaults his then-wife, Ivana Trump, and one in which he receives liposuction and surgery to cover up a growing bald spot on the back of his head.
Trump on Monday on Truth Social called the film “FAKE” and “CLASSLESS” and added that the film will “hopefully ‘bomb.’
“It is a cheap, defamatory and politically discriminatory belligerent action, launched just before the 2024 presidential election, to try to hurt the largest political movement in the history of our country,” Trump said.
He added that his late wife Ivana “was a kind and wonderful person, and I had a wonderful relationship with her until the day she died.”
In the new film, The Apprentice, actor Sebastian Stan plays the role of a young Donald Trump. Former President Donald Trump went on a rant about the film on Monday
‘The author of this pile of garbage, Gabe Sherman, a lowlife and talentless hack who has long been widely discredited, knew that, but chose to ignore it,” Trump continued.
“So sad that HUMAN STUFF, just like the people involved in this hopefully failed venture, are allowed to say and do whatever they want to harm a political movement that is much bigger than any of us,” Trump also said. ‘MAGA2024!’
Before writing the film, his first feature film, Sherman wrote for Vanity Fair and New York magazine and wrote the Roger Ailes biography, The Loudest Voice in the Room.
After adapting that book for a Showtime limited series starring Russell Crowe, Sherman began writing the film that would become The Apprentice.
He said he reported the script thoroughly.
“I read everything I could about Donald Trump and Roy Cohn and New York City in the 1970s and 1980s,” Sherman said in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter. ‘And then I started interviewing people who knew Donald and Roy during those years and asked them for more anecdotes. So it was a mix of historical research plus my own interviews.’
The rape scene is based on Ivana Trump’s divorce decree, which she later revoked in 2015 after he announced his first presidential bid.
On Truth Social last night, Trump called The Apprentice ‘FAKE’ and ‘CLASSLESS’
On Truth Social, Trump emphasized that he and his late first wife Ivana Trump, played by actress Maria Bakalova (left) in the film, “had a great relationship.”
Stan plays Trump and the character Roy Cohn is played by Jeremy Strong, known from Succession.
The film’s director, Ali Abbasi, was in Washington, DC last week and told the audience there that he had initially thought about casting a woman in the Trump role.
“There was a time before I started talking to Sebastian, I thought maybe it should be an actress playing Trump,” Abbasi said. ‘Because I thought there was something strange about his body language and I wanted that. I wanted to play with that a bit. And we tried.’
Speaking to DailyMail.com, Abbasi would not reveal which actresses he spoke to about portraying Trump on the big screen, although he did say he had contacted Cate Blanchett for advice as she was doing a ‘great job’ of Bob Dylan to play.
“I talked to a few people about that and I was serious about it,” Abbasi said in an interview Monday.
“I made overlays of young Donald’s face and several actresses I was considering,” he continued. “I talked to my prosthetics person and tried to figure out how we could fix it, whether someone had the right proportions or not.”
Abbasi told DailyMail.com that he had also conducted a voice test on a woman.
“And eventually, I think, I felt like it all became too gimmicky,” he said.
“It would be contrary to my goal, which is to humanize and, you know, capture complexity. And it was going to be a movie about how you did that stunt,” the director said.
It probably would have angered Trump even more than Stan’s performance.
In 2017, after Melissa McCarthy dressed in drag and played White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Saturday Night Live, the fact that McCarthy was a woman was the “most problematic” part of the sketch in the president’s eyes. Politico reported this.
Cast member Kate McKinnon also played Trump’s first attorney general Jeff Sessions, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a top Trump ally, and former New Yorker Rudy Giuliani, who became Trump’s personal attorney.
Aidy Bryant played Trump’s second Attorney General Bill Barr.
Abbasi said he was not aware that Trump had been angered by women playing his top aides on the comedy show.
“We talk about it like it’s something negative, but it doesn’t have to be something negative,” Abbasi said of gender-bending performances. “But I wasn’t aware of this, I wasn’t aware of it,” he said of Trump’s anger over women playing his aides and allies.
In the end, choosing Stan for Trump felt right.
“I think one big thing about Sebastian is that he – and I’ve said this before – almost specializes in bringing sleazebags and douchebags to life,” Abbasi said. “And give them some kind of humanity and give them some kind of, you feel for him. You feel for these characters. Without necessarily being ridiculed.’
“And it’s a very interesting talent, you know, it’s not easy,” the director said.