Jeremy Strong Reveals Frog Scene That Didn’t End Up in Donald Trump Biopic ‘The Apprentice’
Jeremy Strong is known for his serious, in-depth approach to playing characters, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have a little fun with his role as notorious lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn in the upcoming film The Apprentice, which focuses on Cohn’s mentorship of a young Donald Trump (played by Sebastian Stan).
The Succession alum, appearing on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert Tuesday night, revealed that in one scene that didn’t make the final cut of the Ali Abbasi film out Oct. 11, he took Cohn’s interest in frogs to new heights.
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Cohn, Strong said, had a “room of stuffed frogs and frog figurines,” describing the adviser to Sen. Joseph McCarthy as a “conundrum” who was both “one of the worst humans of the 20th century” and a “demonic Peter Pan who never grew up.”
“So, we did shoot a scene,” Strong recalled. “I asked the costume designer to go find a full-body frog suit. And I was in my bedroom with Donald, and I sang the entirety of the George Hearn song “I Am What I Am” from La Cage Aux Folles in a frog suit. It’s not in the movie. But I think it should be.”
Strong revealed the cut scene when Colbert asked, “Was there more Roy Cohn that you did that we didn’t get to see?” Strong initially said he didn’t know if he should talk about the moment. But that just encouraged Colbert, who said, “You definitely should talk about it now.”
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter after The Apprentice‘s Telluride screening, Strong talked about viewing the project as a “humanistic endeavor.”
“I came to this not as a Democrat or a Republican, but as a humanist,” the actor said. “And through a humanistic lens, your job always is to interrogate human experience and life. … In Hamlet, he writes that our job is to hold a mirror up to nature and to show the age and body of the time — its form and pressure. I think that’s what this movie does. It’s an attempt to show the form and pressures of this moment in time that, in a sense, formed Donald Trump.”
Earlier in the interview, Strong, who admitted he’d been “worrying” about coming up with a personal anecdote to share on the show, revealed that he asked ChatGPT to help him come up with one such story.
The pair then read the results from the generative AI tool off of Strong’s phone, sharing a story about taking up farming and dealing with the challenge of “rebellious” chickens. The actor later revealed that ChatGPT had suggested a number of options including a story about risotto with saffron.
That one, Colbert indicated, they should save for a future appearance.
The Apprentice, directed by Abbasi from a script by Gabriel Sherman, is set to hit theaters on Oct. 11.
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