The making of Donald Trump

It’s taken six years, but The Apprentice, the film former US President Donald Trump didn’t want anyone to see, is finally out in cinemas, just ahead of the US presidential election.
There was so much back-and-forth around whether or not the production would go ahead that by the time filming was given a green light, Sebastian Stan, who plays a young Donald Trump, resorted to a month of consuming ramen with soy sauce to quickly gain weight.
Trump has publicly condemned the “fake and classless movie” which he says is a “cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job, put out right before the 2024 presidential election to try and hurt the Greatest Political Movement in the History of our Country.”
It’s not clear whether he has actually watched the film. If he did, movie reviewer Kate Rodger thinks he wouldn’t actually mind how he was portrayed.
“It’s almost a version of Donald that he would’ve done… he probably would’ve looked at it and been quite stoked about it,” she says.
Unlike the over-the-top Alec Baldwin impressions on Saturday Night Live, Sebastian Stan’s portrayal of the former President is understated, which Rodger thinks was a clever move.
“It was this slow infusion of the way that he spoke, and his mouth particularly. He kind of morphs really slowly, changing the way he held himself … and how he dealt with people and his early relationship with Roy [Cohn] compared to how their relationship was at the end of the film,” she says.
Roy Cohn was an American attorney who has a colourful story of his own. Donald Trump sought him out during the early seventies when Trump and his father, Fred Trump had been sued by the U.S. Department of Justice alleging racial bias.
Cohn went on to mentor Trump and as the film progresses viewers see a gradual shift in power dynamics as the mentee outgrows the mentor.
“It was such a user relationship, he knew that Roy was good for him but there was the father figure aspect of it, for both of them I think, that he was the guy that was giving him the support when clearly his father wasn’t doing so,” Rodger says.
The movie debuted in New Zealand cinemas on the October 10, and the close timing with the US election prompted speculation the film’s creators were trying to influence how people voted.
Rodger doesn’t think so.
“I don’t feel like there’s anything in this film that people don’t already have access to, this relationship between him and Cohn was a fascinating story and I’m glad I saw it, but if I was a Trump supporter would that movie change anything? I’d argue no.”
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