Jeremy Strong says portraying Roy Cohn in 'The Apprentice' made him feel 'some pity' for the notorious political fixer
"Roy Cohn was an awful person who did unconscionably bad things. He was also a human being," Strong told Yahoo Entertainment.
The Apprentice has faced quite a bit of controversy. Jeremy Strong didn’t consider that possibility when he signed on to play Roy Cohn, the mentor to then real estate mogul Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan).
“That’s sort of outside the bounds of your work,” Strong told Yahoo Entertainment. “If anything, my trepidation had to do with ... could I do it? Could I play him?”
The film, which is in theaters now, charts a young Trump’s ascent to power through his relationship with Cohn. Cohn was a political fixer who assisted Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s investigations into suspected communists and contributed to the Lavender Scare in the 1950s, in which the government persecuted gay employees.
Strong was anxious about being influenced by other actors who have played Cohn, like Al Pacino, who took on the role in the 2003 HBO miniseries adaptation of Angels in America. Will Brill most recently played Cohn in Fellow Travelers, a fictional miniseries about the romance between two political staffers who first meet during the Lavender Scare.
Strong said both his and Stan’s roles were a challenge because it’s a “small step ... from the sublime to the ridiculous.”
“It could work, or you could really crash and burn,” he said. “[Stan and I were] both kind of interested in that place where that is what is hanging in the balance.”
The Apprentice was written by Gabriel Sherman, a reporter who covered Trump’s life and friendship with Cohn before Trump became president. Stan’s portrayal reflects how Trump’s voice, mannerisms, appearance and speech patterns became increasingly similar to Cohn’s over the years.
Director Ali Abbasi told Yahoo Entertainment that he wanted to focus on the relationship between the two men because it was the clearest demonstration of Trump’s “transformation” from businessman to political figure.
“If you want to understand how he became the ... political person he is, and his relationship to power, ambition, branding and media, this is the most influential relationship in his life,” Abbasi said.
Stan told Yahoo Entertainment that he sees Trump’s evolution and “loss of empathy and humanity” over the years as “tragic.” Strong feels similarly about Cohn.
“I see his life tragically. I can also understand why people perceive his life monstrously. I think those things can coexist,” he said. “I think we run into trouble when we decide things have to be binary. There are polarities in everything — in all of us.”
Strong said he can’t watch Cohn’s interview with Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes, in which the disbarred lawyer denied he had AIDS shortly before dying from it, without “feeling some pity for him.”
“Roy Cohn was an awful person who did unconscionably bad things. He was also a human being,” Strong said.