One month before the American presidential election, filmmaker Ali Abbasi paints a corrosive portrait of the rise of Donald Trump, played by Sebastian Stan. But is everything true in the film? Decryption.
Just one month before the American presidential election, a film asks: how Donald Trump became the man we know today? That’s the whole point of The Apprenticewhich is released in French theaters this Wednesday, October 9, two days before it arrives on American screens. Directed by Ali Abbasi (The Border, The Nights of Mashhad), this biopic focuses on the rise of the businessman (Sebastian Stan), who thanks to lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) who taught him his controversial methods in the 1970s and 1980s, became the business tycoon who does not hesitate to twist the truth in his interest, as we know him today.
To write the screenplay for The Apprenticejournalist Gabriel Sherman read biographies of the two protagonists, dissected archive images, and also interviewed former close friends of Donald Trump or former colleagues of Roy Cohn. However, during its screening at the Cannes Film Festival last May, Donald Trump’s teams rebelled against certain scenes and cried defamation. Ali Abbasi himself assures that it is not a biopic in the press kit, ensuring that it only focused on a specific event in his life. Let’s return in detail to the subject of the film, its fidelity to historical reality, and in particular to these scenes which are particularly controversial. Warning, the rest of this article may contain spoilers for the film.
What was the relationship between Donald Trump and Roy Cohn?
The Apprentice focuses entirely on the relationship between Donald Trump and Roy Cohn, to show how the latter shaped the former by instilling in him his methods (attacking, recognizing nothing and claiming victory no matter what) to make him the character that he ‘we know today…. Until the student surpasses the master.
McCarthy’s associate in “the witch hunt” in the 1950s, decried for his methods (and his links with the mafia) to such an extent that he was nicknamed “the devil’s advocate”, Roy Cohn indeed represented Donald Trump and his father in court in the 1970s. They met in a private club in New York in 1973, while the young Trump was looking for a lawyer: his father’s company was accused of discrimination against minorities. “If you need someone who can get vicious against your opponents, you go to Roy,” Trump said in a 1979 interview with Newsweek.
Publicly, Roy Cohn condemned homosexuality, even though he himself had relationships with men. He died of AIDS in 1986, although he claimed until the end that he was suffering from liver cancer. “When Donald learned that Roy was ill, he dropped him like an old sock,” the lawyer’s personal secretary, Susan Bell, told Vanity Fair. Donald Trump denied this accusation.
Did Donald Trump rape his first wife?
This is one of the most shocking and controversial scenes in The Apprenticeand Donald Trump’s teams quickly rose up to deny it: after she insulted him about his physique, Donald Trump appears forcing his wife Ivana (Maria Baklova) to have sexual intercourse against her will and despite his numerous protests. A shocking scene for what it represents but which also resonates when we know that at least 26 women have accused Donald Trump of rape, sexual assault or sexual harassment since the 1970s. Accusations which, we recall, have always been denied by the former American president.
Although we obviously do not know whether this attack actually took place, the scene of The Apprentice refers to a statement by Ivana Trump made in 1990, during her divorce from the future American president. In it, she describes a similar attack, which allegedly occurred shortly after Donald Trump had scalp reduction surgery (in the film, this happens before). While she describes this event as rape, she backpedals 3 years later, assuring that she “felt violated as a woman. I called this event rape, but I don’t want my words to be interpreted in their literal or criminal sense. For his part, during the divorce proceedings, Donald Trump assured that this incident reported by his wife was “obviously false”.
After their divorce in 1990, Donald Trump had two other wives: Marla Maples, from 1993 to 1999, and Melania Trump, whom he married in 2005. Ivana Trump died in 2022, after a fall from stairs at her residence from Manhattan
Has Donald Trump had cosmetic surgery?
In The ApprenticeDonald Trump can be seen doing cosmetic surgery, including liposuction and scalp reduction surgery. In reality, the latter was mentioned by Ivana Trump in her divorce deposition in 1990. She also said that he had liposuction on his chin and hips. On the other hand, these operations have never been publicly addressed by the main interested party and have only been the subject of speculation.
Synopsis – Focus on the rise to power of young Donald Trump thanks to a Faustian pact with conservative lawyer and political matchmaker Roy Cohn.