‘The Apprentice’ director shares the challenges of making a Donald Trump movie despite receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the former president

• Ali Abbasi’s film ‘The Apprentice’ faced backlash from Donald Trump after its Cannes debut.
• The film follows Trump’s rise as a real estate tycoon in New York City.
• Abbasi discusses how hard it was to find a distributor for the film after getting a cease-and-desist letter from Trump.

Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi is no stranger to challenging material.

His directorial debut, the 2016 horror “Shelley,” follows a surrogacy gone horribly wrong. With 2018’s “Border,” he made a gritty modern-day fairy tale centered on the unique life of a customs officer. Then, in 2022, he found acclaim with “Holy Spider,” which follows a female journalist investigating a serial killer in Iran.

Now Abbasi pushes the envelope further with his first English-language film, “The Apprentice,” an examination of how Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) went from being an unknown to a bombastic New York City real-estate tycoon under the tutelage of lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong).

Both Stan, Strong, and Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump deliver impressive performances as three people who, in different ways, have a hunger for power.

However, examining Trump can catch the ire of the former president, especially when you portray him in a movie as popping weight-loss pills like candy, having scalp reduction surgery, and sexually assaulting his first wife, Ivana, based on an allegation she made in a deposition during her 1990 divorce of Trump (Ivana recanted the testimony in 2015. Trump denied the allegation.)

After the movie premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in May, Abbasi and its screenwriter, Gabriel Sherman, received a cease-and-desist letter from Trump’s lawyers. He told Business Insider he never planned to make the letter public, but it somehow leaked to the press. The news halted any potential deals he had with streamers and major distributors, Abbasi said. Eventually, it was bought by Briarcliff Entertainment, known for releasing Michael Moore’s 2018 documentary “Fahrenheit 11/9,” centered on the 2016 presidential election and Trump’s presidency.

Business Insider spoke to Abbasi over Zoom about the challenges of finding a distributor for the movie, what may happen in Hollywood if Trump is back in office, and if Abbasi thinks Trump will accept the results of the presidential election.

After the interview was conducted, Business Insider reached out to Trump for comment on Abbasi’s statements below. A spokesperson for the former president slammed the movie.

“The filmmakers now readily admit they fabricated scenes and created fake stories to fit some deranged narrative about President Trump that is completely untrue,” Trump communications director Steven Cheung said Friday. “This garbage is pure fiction, which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked.”

“As with the illegal Kamala witch-hunts,” the statement continued, referencing Trump’s presidential opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, “this is election interference by Hollywood elites right before November, who know that President Trump will retake the White House and beat their candidate of choice because nothing they have done has worked.”

“This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should never see the light of day, and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store,” the statement concluded. “It belongs in a dumpster fire.”

You’ve been working on getting the movie made since 2018. I’m sure during that time, those close to you have wondered, “Why are you doing this?” So, what made you want to see this through?

This is not a project you get a lot of encouragement from your friends. Like, “Do it! Do a Donald Trump movie!” But frankly, my motivation was that it is not a Donald Trump movie. It is an excuse to talk about other interesting stuff. It’s an excuse to talk about the American power and legal system. The way you can find loopholes in it and how through this transformative relationship with Roy taught Donald to create his own reality and use the media.

And I feel it’s art imitating life in what unfolded for you. In the movie, we watch how relationships and side deals make Trump a real estate tycoon. In real life, after the movie was screened at Cannes, seemingly relationships and side deals made it difficult for the movie to initially find a streamer or mainstream distributor. That must have been wild to witness.

I would have said it’s hilarious. The only thing is it wasn’t hilarious for me. But from the outside looking in, it was a crazy situation. They were using a page from Roy Cohn’s playbook against us. 

You show us in the movie that Cohn’s main weapon is to attack, attack, attack, and that may have been exactly what Trump did once the movie premiered. 

And whoever his advisors are, they know a lot about how this industry works. The timing couldn’t have been better for him and worse for us. The cease-and-desist letter came out just at the moment when we were trying to signal to the industry that this is a regular movie. It may be political, but it’s not that.

We got a really good reception in Cannes. People were praising the movie. I remember some of the studios were coming with their legal teams and taking it very seriously to acquire the movie. And then that letter came. [Laughs.] 

What was really interesting is the letter was sent to me and Gabe. Usually, those letters go to production or the production’s attorney. It was sent to me and Gabe personally. And we talked to our lawyers, and they said, “You don’t want controversy; we want this to be a low profile. Don’t talk about the letter.” So that’s what we did.

And then I got a call from a news outlet saying, “We obtained a copy of this letter.” I thought, how the fuck did you obtain a copy when nobody has it except for me and Gabe? So I felt if this is not orchestrated then I’m really paranoid. It was like they made sure it got in the news that they sent the letter. 

Are you afraid that certain movies will not get made if Trump is president again?

It’s a small fear for me; it’s a much bigger fear for this country. He has been bullying people by being able to have things said about him or not said about him and his life and his family. I think he’ll want certain things to happen in the entertainment space. 

I would say to studio people, “I’m surprised; you all know you can make money out of this movie.” They were telling me, “This is an entertaining movie. It’s not what we thought it would be. This is quite viable commercially.” And I would say, “So what’s the problem?”

And they would explain that though they have no problem with it when they go up to the media company or the telecom company that owns the entire thing, they might be afraid that a possible Trump administration would come after them: trade sanctions or taxes or whatever. That’s not unthinkable. 

It sounds like Sebastian and Jeremy were in character throughout the production. How far did they take that? Would you direct them by their real names or Donald and Roy?

I mean, Sebastian, Jeremy, Maria, Martin Donovan [who plays Trump’s older brother Fred]; they all have their own way of tackling the material. Being in character, not being in character; Method, not Method.

My way of working is I need to create a certain reality on set, and it needs to happen the moment it’s happening. So, for me, the preparation is one thing, but then what actually happens on set as we turn on the camera is important.

I tried really to keep the material fresh for them. Not to do 200 different angles, and if we did do different coverage, I tried to throw them a curveball once in a while. Do something improvised.

I liked the idea that when you do a take, the actors don’t know exactly what’s happening because that’s life. 

Give me an example of a curveball. 

There was a moment with Donald and Ivana [are] on the escalator in Trump Tower. They were going down and talking and there was tension between them through the night.

At one point, I told Sebastian when you go down the escalator this time, you’re going to see this woman that Donald has been fucking, and you get worried that Ivana might see her. I never told Maria this. We did a few takes.

Then I went to Maria [and said] that Ivana just found out that this woman you’re going to see is having an affair with Donald. And I didn’t tell Sebastian this. We did a few takes of that. 

Now, in the edit, you can decide which reaction to the woman works better in the scene: Donald’s or Ivana’s. 

Exactly. The way I like to work, especially with this project, was seeing reality through different angles and perspectives. The movie came together for me in the editing. There were certainly things I asked the actors that might have sounded weird to them or not logical and I’m happy they were generous enough to roll with the punches. 

Like asking Jeremy to put on a frog costume for a dream sequence?

Well, that was his own idea. There was this sequence in the script where Donald, after seeing Roy a few times, starts dreaming of him, and it has a slight homoerotic undertone.

For me, it was more about showing how big an effect Roy has on Donald. We’re shooting it in an interesting way with a curved mirror, and then Jeremy says, “How about I wear a frog costume and sing ‘I Am What I Am?'” And I said, “I think that might be too much,” but I didn’t want to kill his joy.

So we continued and I’m hoping he just forgets about the idea. Then I realized he sent someone from costume to get a fucking frog costume. So we ended up with Jeremy in a frog costume.

Will that scene ever see the light of day?

Well, anything is possible. [Laughs.]

Do you admire Donald Trump after making this movie?

My feelings toward him as a human being haven’t changed, really. Some of my liberal friends hate him, but their point of view is he’s dumb, the way he talks is all over the place, and he’s greedy. And I’m like, you’re really underestimating the whole US political system.

This is the most complicated political system in the world. You don’t become president if you’re not extremely intelligent and extremely savvy, and whatever you think of the guy, you can’t say, “Oh, he’s dumb.”

I admire his relentlessness. That’s his biggest asset as a politician. I don’t think he’s a good businessman. If he stayed in real estate it wouldn’t have ended well. But you see, he has this ability to come with the one-liners and be in the moment. So, as a human being, that’s interesting.

Just because he’s such a good entertainer, sometimes you forget the seriousness and gravity of some of the stuff he’s saying and what some of his followers are doing. I think that’s dangerous. 

Do you think he will accept the results of this election?

I saw, like everyone else, what happened on January 6th, which was horrific. And I have a feeling that a lot of people got away with insane stuff. Look at that footage.

When you see that, you think, why would they change their opinion about this election? Why would they magically accept this when they didn’t accept that?

But somehow, I’m an optimist. I was optimistic when people told me not to do this movie or when people said no one would buy this movie, so I really hope that everyone learned their lesson on January 6th. I hope to think that even though people may be tempted to do that again, they know what the consequences are, and they don’t do it. 

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.