The first ‘Apprentice’ footage gives us a glimpse of Sebastian Stan’s Donald Trump

The footage features Trump being coached through an interview by Roy Cohn

By Joe Allen Published September 3, 2024

Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan in The Apprentice — Briar Cliff Entertainment

Since Donald Trump burst into the political arena in 2015, everyone has done some sort of impression of him. Some of those impressions have been better than others. The Apprentice, though, will be the first time that we see a feature-length performance of Donald Trump on the big screen. Sebastian Stan is taking on a much younger version of the character as he tries to make a name for himself in New York City.

Now, we’ve got our first glimpse at Stan’s Trump impression courtesy of a one-minute clip from the film. In the clip, Jeremy Strong’s Roy Cohn coaching Trump as he speaks on the phone to a reporter. “I intend to acquire the Commodore, and I’m planning on making it the best and the finest building in the city, maybe the country — in the world … it’s going to be the finest building in the world,” Stan says in the clip, showing us how subtle his take on the future president is.

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Fresh from turn away crowds and standing ovations at the Cannes and Telluride film festivals, THE APPRENTICE, starring Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump, Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn, and Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump. #TheApprentice is exclusively in theaters October 11. pic.twitter.com/qDjLOhHh9H

— Briarcliff Entertainment (@BriarcliffEnt) September 3, 2024

After struggling to find a buyer, The Apprentice is now set for an Oct. 11 release date, roughly a month before Trump is on the ballot as the Republican nominee for president. While the movie is about a figure who still dominates American life, The Apprentice is set in the late 1970s and early 1980s as Donald Trump attempts to make a name for himself in New York real estate. Trump is the apprentice of the film’s title, and is working under the tutelage of Strong’s Roy Cohn. In spite of legal action threatened by the Trump campaign, the movie is set to hit theaters in October. At that time, we’ll see just how convincing Stan’s Trump is in context.

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Joe Allen is a freelance culture writer based in upstate New York. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The…

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