Actor Sebastian Stan scored a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal of a young Donald Trump in The Apprentice, a film that the now-president slammed as a “pile of garbage.”
The film, written by Vanity Fair correspondent Gabriel Sherman, tracks Trump’s emergence in the world of business, long before his political career, focusing on his rise as a New York real estate developer and his mentorship under his former attorney Roy Cohn, played by Succession’s Jeremy Strong — who was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor.
Stan will join several other of Hollywood’s top actors in the Academy’s leading role category including Adrien Brody for his role in The Brutalist, Conclave star Ralph Fiennes, Timothée Chalamet for his portrayal of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown and Sing Sing’s Colman Domingo.
The film was denounced by Trump in October in a fiery Truth Social post, days after its release, calling the work a “cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job” he said was an attempt to “hurt the Greatest Political Movement in the History of our Country” – his campaign – ahead of the 2024 presidential election. He went on to blast the makers of the film as “HUMAN SCUM.” Trump’s lawyer also sent a cease-and-desist letter to the filmmakers.
The Apprentice went on to bomb at the box office, as Trump had hoped, grossing just $1.58 million in its opening weekend. The lacklustre box office pull, however, has not stopped Hollywood from recognizing Stan and Strong for their performances.
Despite Trump’s criticism, The Apprentice director Ali Abbasi told Mediaite’s Press Club host Aidan McLaughlin in October that the film was a “humanist project” and not a political one that he hoped would shed some light on the polarizing political figure’s origins.
