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There are three rules for success in life: Attack, attack, attack. Admit nothing, deny everything. And always claim victory.

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump is sticking to them to this day.

The original advice is given to the young Trump by the notorious New York lawyer Roy Cohn, as played by Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong, in a controversial new biopic which is opening in cinemas across the US this weekend, with just 25 days to go until election day.

Pic: Mongrel Media/Everett/Shutterstock

.THE APPRENTICE, from left: Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn, Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump, 2024. .. Mongrel Media / Courtesy Everett Collection.The Apprentice - 2024
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The Apprentice, starring Jeremy Strong (L) and Sebastian Stan is out in the US. Pic: Mongrel Media/Everett/Shutterstock

The movie’s release amounts to an unwelcome October surprise for Trump’s campaign. He is just the latest former US leader to fall foul of big screen incarnation.

Dan Snyder, a close billionaire friend of the former president, originally helped fund the film’s production with the expectation that it would depict Trump positively.

After seeing a finished cut he spoke to his lawyers in an attempt to stop its distribution.

Trump’s own legal team issued a cease and desist notice to stop the “marketing, distribution, and publication” of the movie.

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They were unsuccessful.

The Apprentice had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

Pic: Mongrel Media/Everett/Shutterstock

The Apprentice - 2024
THE APPRENTICE, from left: Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump, Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump, 2024. ph: Pief Weyman / © Mongrel Media / Courtesy Everett Collection

2024
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Sebastian Stan and Maria Bakalova as Donald and Ivana Trump in a scene from The Apprentice. Pic: Mongrel Media/Everett/Shutterstock

Donald Trump and Ivana Trump 1985. Pic: Adam Scull/PHOTOlink.net/MediaPunch /IPX/AP
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Donald Trump and Ivana Trump in 1985. Pic: Adam Scull/PHOTOlink.net/MediaPunch /IPX/AP

It pulled off its New York premiere in Manhattan last week after a Kickstarter fundraiser was set up to help “promote and defend the acclaimed Trump biopic that corporate America is scared to show you”.

Now it is going on commercial release in the US and Europe. It is out in the UK on 18 October.

The film’s producers insist that it is “a fair and balanced portrait of the former president” based on fact, as stated at the start of the film.

It opens without comment, playing archive footage of Richard M Nixon’s “I’m not a crook” speech and his claim that he never personally profited from public office. The implied comparison with Trump is unmissable.

President Richard Nixon speaks near Orlando, Fla. to the Associated Press Managing Editors annual meeting, Nov. 17, 1973. Nixon told the APME "I am not a crook." (AP Photo)
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In 1973 then president Richard Nixon told reporters ‘I am not a crook’. Pic: AP

The film covers “Donnie” as he starts out in his father’s property business in the 1970s and 1980s – before his political career and his time as the star of the long-running The Apprentice reality TV show.

It ends as Trump commissions the ghostwriter for his 1987 bestseller, The Art Of The Deal, and undergoes surgery for liposuction and baldness.

The portrait of the future president is intimate. Sebastian Stan brilliantly mimics many of the gestures and mannerisms which have become familiar to a global audience.

Donald Trump
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Donald Trump in New York’s Central Park in 1986. Pic: AP

Trump starts out as a soft, privileged, and highly ambitious young man.

He is shown going on to become a party to blackmail, corruption, attempts to swindle his siblings, and bankruptcy.

In a graphic scene, he rapes his first wife.

In her legal divorce deposition, Ivana did indeed accuse her husband of marital rape.

She recanted the claim years later insisting: “Donald and I are the best of friends and he would never rape me.”

Ivana, the mother of Don Jnr, Ivanka, and Eric Trump, died in 2022.

In this film, Trump is the apprentice tutored in corruption to win by Roy Cohn. Cohn persuades him that there is no such thing as “The truth”, only what you say it is.

Cohn was a well-known New York lawyer whose clients ranged from Trump, Rupert Murdoch and Andy Warhol to Mafia bosses.

Since his death in 1986, he has assumed almost legendary status in US literature as an evil manipulator.

Donald Trump makes his point. Pic: AP/Alex Brandon
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Trump’s legal team issued a cease and desist notice to try to halt the movie. Pic: AP/Alex Brandon

A closet homosexual who died of complications from AIDS, Cohn is a central character in the award-winning drama Angels In America and other fiction and non-fiction works.

Cohn began his career as a fierce anti-Communist prosecutor who worked alongside Richard Nixon and US Senator Joe McCarthy, who led the discredited anti-Communist witch hunts of the early 1950s.

Cohn used all means to ensure that both Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel, mother of two young children, went to the electric chair for spying.

At The Apprentice’s Manhattan after-party, Jeremy Strong told Vanity Fair: “Roy’s legacy is a legacy of shamelessness, mendacity, lies, dissimulation, brutality, and winning as the only moral measure.”

Strong is a method actor, best known as Kendall Roy in Succession, who likes to inhabit the parts he plays.

In Roy Cohn, he says he also found “a kind of guileless innocence and charm at the same time as he was a lethal, brutal, ruthless, savage, remorseless person”.

By the end of the film, Cohn is almost a pathetic character as Trump casts him off, partly in fear of his sickness, partly because of his advice “to slow down” making increasingly questionable “deals”.

Trump relents and throws a final birthday party for Cohn at Mar-a-Lago, spoilt by a thoroughly alienated Ivana telling him that the “solid gold” and diamond Trump cufflinks he’s been given are cheap fakes.

Meanwhile, the real estate tycoon completes his apprenticeship by stealing Cohn’s rules as his own for his book.

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Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris gestures as she speaks during a campaign event in Madison, Wisconsin, U.S., September 20, 2024. REUTERS/Jim Vondruska
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Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Pic: Reuters

Jeremy Strong, Sebastian Stan and Maria Bakalova turn in Oscar-worthy performances – although the Academy may not be in the mood to honour the film next spring if the man himself is voted back into the White House.

Whether friendly or hostile, presidential biopics typically do not do very well.

Neither Primary Colours in 1998 nor Reagan this year made back their production costs.

Primary Colours came out well into Bill Clinton’s second term, too late to damage his political career.

John Travolta’s portrayal of slippery Jack Stanton, a thinly disguised version of Clinton, and his “bimbo eruptions” did little for the president’s long-term reputation.

Dennis Quaid played President Ronald Reagan in a hagiography earlier this year.

Liz and Dick Cheney in Wyoming in 2022. Pic: AP
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Liz and Dick Cheney in Wyoming in 2022. Pic: AP

It fizzled at the box office, was panned by critics, and was quickly pulled from cinemas. It has not been released in the UK.

Reagan died 20 years ago but Facebook still restricted online advertising of the film this year in case it was seen as election interference for the Republicans.

The most successful recent biopic was the satire Vice in which Christian Bale piled on the prosthetic pounds to impersonate Dick Cheney, George W Bush’s vice president.

This year the real Dick Cheney, a staunch Republican who also served Nixon, has endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris over his own party’s candidate.

His daughter, former US congresswoman Liz Cheney, is leading the campaign against him inside the party.

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Unlike those movies, The Apprentice is going live just when Americans are deciding whether or not to vote for Trump.

What impact it will have is uncertain. One audience member at the US premiere thought it could help Trump win because “Sebastian Stan is attractive”.

The film’s Iranian-Danish director Ali Abassi says “it’s fun to be riding on the back of the dragon”.

The scriptwriter Gabriel Sherman hopes the film “makes people sit in a quiet, dark theatre and look with their own eyes at the behaviour of the man that we might elect to be the next president”.

Donald Trump may hate the film and denounce it. But the boastful mega-egotist so painstakingly captured in The Apprentice will nevertheless be upset, one suspects, if it fails to do business “bigly” at the box office.

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Anora: The film opening the conversation about sex work ahead of awards season

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Anora: The film opening the conversation about sex work ahead of awards season

It’s easy to see why Anora, the film currently creating a lot of awards buzz, is being described as a modern day Pretty Woman.

It tells the story of a young woman, a sex worker, who ends up falling in love with a very rich man; this time round, he’s the son of a Russian oligarch.

But the similarities end there. More than 30 years on from Richard Gere and Julia Roberts’ famous Hollywood ending, Anora takes the sugar-coating away from the realities of sex work.

Mikey Madison in Anora. Pic: Neon/Augusta Quirk
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Mikey Madison stars as Anora. Pic: Neon/Augusta Quirk

It is one of those rare films that has already impressed critics – taking the biggest prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and now leading the nominations at the Gotham Awards – but will also appeal to a wider audience looking for something fun and smart, too.

It is the latest story from writer-director Sean Baker, a filmmaker who often focuses on marginalised people and has covered sex work in several of his previous works, from a retired porn star in Red Rocket to a transgender sex worker in Tangerine, and a character who solicits sex work online in The Florida Project.

Pic: Neon
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Anora took home the biggest prize at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. Pic: Neon

The theme was never intentional, he tells Sky News, but after discovering more about the industry he realised he wanted to tell these stories.

“I never imagined me making five films in a row focused on sex work,” he says. “It just happened to be that when I started doing research on the first one, I met sex workers, became friends with sex workers, and discovered that there were a million stories to be told in that world. And each one can be individual and very different, being that there’s so many aspects of sex work, so one led to the next.

“I don’t know if it will continue, I’m not sure, it has to happen organically though – I’d never want it to be a shtick of mine, you know, I want it to be something I’m inspired to do and there has to be a reason behind it.”

Pic: Neon
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Pic: Neon

‘The sex work community is amazing’

Mikey Madison, who plays the lead character Anora – or Ani for short – is now tipped for best actress nominations come awards season next year.

She says she immersed herself in the world of her character when preparing for the role.

“I think that I went into the research not with much knowledge about sex work, and so I was able to learn a lot and educate myself in a way that I don’t know I would have if it weren’t for this film,” she says. “I’m so grateful to have that experience because the sex work community is amazing and I’ve made so many incredible friends.”

But that wasn’t the only prep Madison had to do. She’s listed in the credits as helping to choreograph her character’s dances, and she also had to learn Russian – though admits she’s out of practise again now.

“My Duolingo app has been bothering me trying to get me back into it. I think I just haven’t had a chance to practise any of it, but on the last handful of days of shooting, I was able to listen to pretty full conversations and understand what they were talking about. And at this point, I think it’s gone, but maybe I’ll be able to redevelop it.”

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When Anora competed at Cannes in May it won the Palme d’Or, the top prize for the best feature film.

Baker says the win was far more than just a tick off his bucket list.

“I think it was the bucket list! I mean, that was it,” he says. “It’s been incredible, it really has been, and I really didn’t expect it – we were just so happy to be in competition at Cannes, and next thing you know we’re at the awards ceremony, and next thing you know I’m up on stage and George Lucas is handing me the Palme d’Or.”

“So, yeah, it’s life changing.”

Anora is out in cinemas in the UK today

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Tiger King star announces prison engagement

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Tiger King star announces prison engagement

Tiger King star Joe Exotic has announced he is engaged to a fellow prison inmate. 

The 61-year-old, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado, revealed on X that he plans to marry 33-year-old Jorge Marquez.

“He is so amazing and is from Mexico,” he wrote. “Now, the quest of getting married in prison and getting him asylum or we [will] be leaving America when we both get out.

“Either way, I wish I would have met him long ago.”

Exotic rose to fame on the hit Netflix documentary series Tiger King, which followed the rivalry between his zoo and a big cat sanctuary run by Carole Baskin.

He is serving a 21-year prison sentence after trying to hire two different men to kill Baskin, who had accused him of treating his animals poorly.

Prosecutors said Exotic had offered $10,000 to an undercover FBI agent to kill his rival, telling them: “Just like follow her into a mall parking lot and just cap her and drive off.”

Exotic has always denied the accusations, and his lawyers said he was not being serious.

The 61-year-old was also convicted of killing five tigers, selling tiger cubs and falsifying wildlife records.

His zoo in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, has since closed down.

Read more from Sky News:
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Comedian reveals he was addicted to porn

Exotic is reported to have said he has submitted a marriage application to the federal prison to wed Mr Marquez.

Exotic famously had an unofficial three-way marriage with long-time partner John Finlay and then 19-year-old Travis Maldonado. Mr Maldonado and Exotic later officially married in 2015, but Finlay became estranged.

In October 2017, Mr Maldonado died from a self-inflicted, accidental gunshot wound.

Two months later, Exotic married Dillon Passage, but Passage later announced he was filing for divorce.

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GB News fined £100,000 by Ofcom over Rishi Sunak programme

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GB News fined £100,000 by Ofcom over Rishi Sunak programme

GB News has been fined £100,000 for breaking impartiality rules over a programme featuring Rishi Sunak, Ofcom has said.

It comes after the media watchdog announced in May that the show called People’s Forum: The Prime Minister had breached broadcasting guidelines.

The programme featured then prime minister Mr Sunak answering questions from a studio audience and a presenter.

GB News chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos said the fine was a “direct attack on free speech and journalism in the United Kingdom”.

“We believe these sanctions are unnecessary, unfair and unlawful,” he added.

The hour-long show, which aired on 12 February, prompted 547 complaints to Ofcom.

The regulator found earlier this year that while featuring Mr Sunak was fine in principle, “due weight” should have been given to an “appropriately wide range of significant views” other than the Conservatives.

Rishi Sunak in Chequers in October 2023. Pic: PA
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Pic: PA

Ofcom said Mr Sunak “had a mostly uncontested platform to promote the policies and performance of his government in a period preceding a UK general election,” which it recorded as a breach of impartiality rules.

The watchdog said “given the seriousness and repeated nature of this breach,” it had imposed a £100,000 financial penalty.

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GB News was also directed to “broadcast a statement of our findings against it, on a date and in a form determined by us”.

The TV channel is challenging the breach decision by judicial review and Ofcom will not enforce the sanction decision until those proceedings are concluded.

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Mr Frangopoulos insisted the show featuring Mr Sunak “was an important piece of public interest programming”, and that “appropriate steps” were taken to ensure due impartiality.

He added: “It was designed to allow members of the public to put their own questions directly to leading politicians.

“GB News chooses to be regulated and we understand our obligations under the Code.

“But, equally, Ofcom is obliged by law to uphold freedom of expression and apply its rules fairly and lawfully.”

Ofcom previously found GB News violated due impartiality rules in March over five programmes that featured Tory MPs as presenters.

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