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| Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump in The Apprentice |
It may be a role that has attracted a lot of antipathy, especially since the US presidential election result, but Sebastian Stan’s performance as the young Donald Trump in The Apprentice has rightly earned him Best Actor or equivalent nominations from the EDA Awards, the Independent Spirit Awards and the Golden Globes. Back in November, as awards season began to warm up, he spoke at a press conference about the challenges and opportunities that the film presented.
Sebastian is originally from Romania and moved to New York when he was 12. As such, he has an outsider’s take on the American dream, much like that of Trump’s parents – but he stresses that his performance was also informed by the same media saturation that has affected everybody else in the US, and in the UK too, ““whether it's an SNL impression or 400 emails about something he said, CNN's take or Fox News’ take.” He was excited by the chance to drill down further into such a character.
“Here was an opportunity to actually go in and try to understand and educate oneself and hopefully, if we did our job right, reflect and pass on what we can learn about this person, how he came to be what he is. Not just the ugly parts, but also, as uncomfortable as it might be, to try to understand what makes him so appealing that he can get the popular vote in 2024 – for the first time in 40 years since Ronald Reagan.”
It has, of course, since been demonstrated that Trump did not get the popular vote but fell just below 50%, winning due to a combination of votes for independent candidates and the way the Electoral College works, but Sebastian’s position was in line with what many people assumed at the time.
“The film has aspects that I think are uncomfortable for people,” he observed, “but I think it's perhaps more relevant now than ever to try to go back and really try to understand what it is about this person that drives them. The obvious actor's job is to put your judgment aside and really try to look at the thing as objectively as possible. And that means to some extent, even, really defending this character that you're playing.
“There is this ideology and the American dream here. I had heard a lot about growing up in Europe in a communist country, and as someone who has also benefited from it, I've also questioned what it does to a person. I guess that's another reason why I felt the movie can offer something more if people can see between the lines. There's more to it than just this person here. There is something to the system where somebody like this can become what we're seeing. So I thought it was relevant for a number of reasons.
“I think if it wasn't clear before, it's certainly more clear now that it's important to not ignore, but to understand what it is that appeals to certain people about this person and that, we can't really write him off as perhaps [people have] attempted to do. One of the big sorts of ambivalence about our film has been the fact that it's not fully one way or the other – even though I think if you watch this movie and your takeaway is that this is a pro-Trump film, maybe you should be rethinking your film criticism.
“If you want to make an argument that this isn't a direct hit piece, I don't think it is. We tried our best to go into this in a way that has not been attempted before with this person. As I've said, it's very easy to cast this person off as just being a horrific, despicable human being. And that's certainly very much the case and certainly reflects my personal point of view, but that does not make him any less complex or any less three dimensional in any way, shape or form. It doesn't change the fact that the person does have a past that perhaps we should start trying to look at and understand.
“He tried to stop this movie and you have to ask yourself why. I think it goes back to the fact that there's that this movie, thanks to Gabe [Sherman, the writer], who's done an unbelievable job at researching his life and putting it up there. I think there's a clear reason why there was a threat to him. And if there wasn't, then he didn't have to go to the extent that he did with trying to shut this movie up.
“Obviously, when you're playing a real person, there's all this footage and there's a lot of stuff out there to put together. That part is really like learning an instrument. You know, you're sitting there every day for a certain number of hours listening and watching and it's slow and methodical and you're practicing it over and over and you just get better and better at it, to the point where you're doing it without being aware of it, you're doing in your sleep. It's just practice and it's a little bit of that 10,000 hour rule. For me here, the hesitancy, if I ever had one, was the fact that there's so many impressions of this guy.
“Everyone knows the lips and the hands and it's like if you do it a little bit too much, it just becomes all about that. You know, there's one extra gesticulation and you're out of it. So Ali [Abbasi, the director] and I worked very closely in terms of trying to track this arc. I mean, when you look back at that time when he started out, there are those familiar mannerisms there, but he didn't hold eye contact the same way. He didn't gesticulate as much. He didn't lean into the expressions as he does. I've always said, I bet you he's been watching himself so much that he recycles himself every time, and that's why he's ballooned into the thing that he is now.
“At the beginning, even looking at the 1988 Oprah interview, he spoke very quickly. These things were evolving. I think it was just trying to really try to get you into the story and get past your initial judgment as a viewer coming in with all the baggage that you have from all of the news outlets and how much he's been covered today, and hopefully get you on the journey.”
