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The Fire Behind The Film: ‘The Apprentice’


'The Apprentice' director Ali Abbasi, writer Gabe Sherman and stars Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong discuss the journey of the Donald Trump movie.

In this ‘70s-set Manhattan tale, an ambitious real estate developer looking to crack the big time finds a mentor and role model in a take-no-prisoners lawyer who during the Red Scare was Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s henchman, and who sent the Rosenbergs to the electric chair. Cohn used these like brass knuckles, in one scene threatening to expose same-sex trysts of one married man whose vote got Trump and his father a slap on the wrist for discriminating against Black renters in their apartment buildings. And the combination of Gabe’s journalistic rigor and veracity, and Ali’s kind of, as he says, riding the dragon, punk-rock Lynchian style, gave us this really incredible canvas to work on where we had a tremendous amount of freedom to play.

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