Cannes Meets Trump: ‘The Apprentice’ Sells a Controversial Origin Story

Would Donald J. Trump enjoy Cannes? It’s possible, since the extravagant displays of wealth here — all the yachts and glamour — are typically his thing.

But would Cannes enjoy Donald J. Trump?

You might be tempted to say no, since the Cannes Film Festival draws the sort of liberal-leaning artists that reliably vote against the former president and his allies. But that clash of sensibilities lent a frisson to Monday’s premiere of “The Apprentice,” starring Sebastian Stan as a young Trump.

Directed by Ali Abbasi (“Border,” “Holy Spider”) and written by the author Gabriel Sherman, this origin story of sorts begins with Trump in his late 20s as he aspires to greatness but mostly putters around collecting overdue rent for his father’s real estate company. (One angry tenant responds by hurling a pot of boiling water at him.) Trump is a man in need of a mentor, and he finds it in the lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), who takes an immediate liking to this young striver. And why wouldn’t they spark to each other? On one visit, Trump hops out of a car emblazoned with the license plate “DJT” and sees that Cohn’s own plate reads “RMC.” Game recognizes game.

The closeted Cohn character has complicated reasons for keeping Trump close: There’s a one-sided attraction there, and when giving Trump an expensive suit, he tells the younger man, “If you look like a million bucks, I look like a million bucks.” But mostly, he sees Trump as an appreciative vessel for his lessons in venality. Cohn teaches him how to use dirty tricks to succeed in business and imparts three rules that will become Trump’s modus operandi: Always be on the attack, deny everything and never admit defeat.

But in its own way, theirs is a “Star Is Born” dynamic: As Trump rises, Cohn falls on harder times, and the protégé who was once so easily impressed now seems sickened to spend time with someone no longer on his level. By the time we reach the 1980s, Trump has married his first wife, Ivana (Maria Bakalova), and broken ground on his crowning real estate achievement, Trump Tower. Still, Cohn won’t be dispatched from his high-flying life quite so easily.

Is the movie sympathetic to Trump? Not exactly, though it labors to at least explain him. At first, Stan’s performance feels surprisingly toned down: Though young Trump is certainly full of himself, he seems more abashed in Cohn’s outsize presence. But as Trump gets hooked on success (and speedlike diet pills), Stan transforms into the man we know today, who leads with bluster and arrogance. “The Apprentice” suggests he’s little more than a MAGA magpie, stealing his famous “Make America Great Again” phrase from a Reagan operative and even modeling his orange complexion on Cohn, who liked to tan himself to a radioactive umber.

But will audiences want to watch a movie about Trump in a year when the former president’s re-election bid and multiple trials continue to dominate headlines?

I spoke with buyers who worried that the film could end up in a sort of no man’s land where liberal audiences aren’t inclined to see it and conservative moviegoers will rail against its depiction of Trump. Already, one of the film’s financiers has allegedly tried to thwart the release of “The Apprentice”: Variety reported that the former Washington Commanders owner Dan Snyder, a friend of Trump’s, was incensed after watching an early cut of the film that he perceived to be unflattering to the former president. (Kinematics, one of the companies backing the film, denied that Snyder was involved.)

A scene in which Trump sexually assaults Ivana was said to be a sticking point for Snyder, and will surely be one of the film’s most talked-about moments. In it, Trump rebuffs his wife when she tries to seduce him and bluntly confesses that he’s no longer attracted to her. But when she begins to disparage his looks in return, Trump angrily throws her to the ground and assaults her. (Though Ivana accused Trump of rape during their divorce deposition, she walked back the claim in 1993; she died in 2022.)

At press time, “The Apprentice” had not yet found a distributor, but a gutsy studio could run an attention-getting awards campaign for Stan and Strong. That could mitigate some of the potential audience apathy, though it does pose an awards-season conundrum: For once, can Hollywood’s liberal left be encouraged to vote for Trump?