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The Apprentice Director Ali Abbasi on Humanizing Donald Trump in New Film: ‘It’s Dangerous Not to’

Ali Abbasi doesn't have a dog in the fight of American politics. That's how the Iranian-Danish filmmaker was able to make his new Donald Trump origin story, The Apprentice, from such a neutral perspective.

Cohn, who died of AIDS in the 1986, was known for working with Sen. Joseph McCarthy on his anti-communist hearings in the early 1950s, and he successfully prosecuted Julius and Ethel Rosenbergs for espionage, leading to their execution in 1953. The film has received lots of press attention for a scene in which Trump sexually assaults his first wife, Ivana, played by Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm star Maria Bakalova. Ali Abassi: I think almost everyone else has got him wrong, you know, because almost everyone else has tried to demonize him, tried to mock him… I don’t feel like Roy Cohn is close to the character in Angels in America either.

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