Full-length trailer for ‘The Apprentice’ drops ahead of presidential debate
Ahead of Donald Trump’s Tuesday night face-off with Vice President Kamala Harris, the official full-length trailer for “The Apprentice” has been released.
The film — based on the origin story of the Manhattan real estate mogul-turned-polarizing political figure — stars heartthrob Sebastian Stan as a young Trump in the 1970s and ’80s, alongside Emmy winner Jeremy Strong as his image conscience mentor Roy Cohn.
The one-and-a-half minute clip of the Ali Abbasi-directed unauthorized biopic opens with Trump meeting the cunning New York City attorney and right wing political power broker, who teaches him the tricks of the trade.
“Attack, attack, attack; admit nothing, deny everything; no matter what happens, you claim victory and never admit defeat,” Cohn says in the film, scripted by Vanity Fair correspondent Gabriel Sherman, who has long written about Trump.
“You have to be willing to do anything to anyone to win,” Cohn later says.
Amid the fast-moving action of the trailer, Trump is seen shaking hands, making demands, having sex and undergoing cosmetic procedures.
Cohn cuts a striking figure throughout the clip, barking that it “looks totally disgusting” when Trump enthusiastically grabs a cheeseball at an event. He later tells him: “You have a big ass, you gotta work on that.”
The future president is also shown grinning while looking at a “Let’s Make America Great Again” pin, first popularized during Ronald Reagan’s successful campaign in 1980.
Jeremy Strong (left) as Roy Cohn and Sebastian Stan (right) as Donald Trump in “The Apprentice,” a film by Ali Abbasi. (Pief Weyman)“Weeds” star Martin Donovan plays the Trump family patriarch, Fred, Sr., while Maria Bakalova — who earned an Academy Award nomination for 2020’s “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” — stars as first wife, Ivana.
According to the film’s synopsis, “A young Donald Trump, eager to make his name as a hungry second son of a wealthy family in 1970s New York, comes under the spell of Roy Cohn, the cutthroat attorney who would help create the Donald Trump we know today.”
“The Apprentice” is set to hit U.S. theaters on Oct. 11.