A clip of the upcoming Donald Trump movie The Apprentice has been released, depicting Sebastian Stan in action as the former US president for the first time.
The Apprentice centres around a young Trump towards the beginning of his career in business, and proved to be immediately divisive when it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.
Emmy-nominated Pam & Tommy star Sebastian takes the lead as the entrepreneur-turned-politician, alongside Succession’s Jeremy Strong as his mentor Roy Cohn.
On Tuesday evening, production company Studio Canal released a first-look clip of the film, in which Trump conducts an interview from his car.
In the minute-long teaser, viewers see Trump’s signature boasting and often-imitated way of speaking, while being encouraged to exaggerate by his mentor.
Watch the clip for yourself below:
Although Ali Abbasi’s film centres around the early years of Trump’s business career in the 1970s and 80s. It also touches on his marriage to his first wife, Ivana, including a scene based on an incident detailed by Ivana Trump during her 1990 divorce proceedings, which she initially described as “rape”, per The Guardian.
In a statement three years later, Ivana said: “On one occasion during 1989, Mr Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently towards me than he had during our marriage.
“As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent. I referred to this as a ‘rape’, but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”
Trump previously referred to his ex-wife’s account as “obviously false”.
Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign leader Steven Cheung wasted no time in rubbishing the film after its premiere, calling it “garbage” and “pure fiction which sensationalises lies that have been long debunked” in a statement to Variety.
Cheung also branded the film “election interference by Hollywood elites”, claiming it “should not see the light of day” and belongs “in a dumpster fire” as it “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 Trump campaign added that they’d be “filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers”.
According to one review, The Apprentice opens with a title card stating that the film is “based on real events”, but includes fictionalised elements.
