Why The Apprentice, a new film about Donald Trump’s early years, is an unwelcome surprise for his campaign
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 a young Trump by the notorious New York lawyer Roy Cohn in a controversial new biopic which is opening in cinemas across the US this weekend, with just over three weeks to go until election day.
The Apprentice, starring Jeremy Strong (L) and Sebastian Stan (R), 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.
They were unsuccessful.
The Apprentice had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
Trump’s legal team issued a cease and desist notice to try to halt the movie. Pic: AP
Cohn – a closeted gay man who died of complications from AIDS – 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 and 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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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.
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.
Liz and Dick Cheney in Wyoming in 2022. Pic: AP
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.
Unlike those movies, The Apprentice is going live just when Americans are deciding whether or not to vote for Trump.
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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 Abbassi 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.
Virginia Giuffre, who accused Prince Andrew of sexual assault, has died aged 41.
In a statement to Sky’s US partner network NBC News on Friday, her family said she took her own life in the Perth suburb of Neergabby, Australia, where she had been living for several years.
“It is with utterly broken hearts that we announce that Virginia passed away last night at her farm in Western Australia,” her family said.
“She lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking.
“Virginia was a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking. She was the light that lifted so many survivors.
“In the end, the toll of abuse is so heavy that it became unbearable for Virginia to handle its weight.”
Pic: AP
Police said emergency services received reports of an unresponsive woman at a property in Neergabby on Friday night.
“Police and St John Western Australia attended and provided emergency first aid. Sadly, the 41-year-old woman was declared deceased at the scene,” a police spokeswoman said.
“The death is being investigated by Major Crime detectives; early indication is the death is not suspicious.”
Sexual assault claims
Prince Andrew has denied all claims of wrongdoing. File pic: Reuters
Ms Giuffre sued the Duke of York for sexual abuse in August 2021, saying Andrew had sex with her when she was 17 and had been trafficked by his friend, the billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The duke has repeatedly denied the claims, and he has not been charged with any criminal offences.
In March 2022, it was announced Ms Giuffre and Andrew had reached an out-of-court settlement – believed to include a “substantial donation to Ms Giuffre’s charity in support of victims’ rights”.
‘An incredible champion’
Sigrid McCawley, Ms Giuffre’s attorney, said in a statement that she “was much more than a client to me; she was a dear friend and an incredible champion for other victims”.
“Her courage pushed me to fight harder, and her strength was awe-inspiring,” she said. “The world has lost an amazing human being today.”
“Rest in peace, my sweet angel,” she added.
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Dini von Mueffling, Ms Giuffre’s representative, also said that “Virginia was one of the most extraordinary human beings I have ever had the honour to know”.
“Deeply loving, wise, and funny, she was a beacon to other survivors and victims,” she added. “She adored her children and many animals.
“She was always more concerned with me than with herself. I will miss her beyond words.
“It was the privilege of a lifetime to represent her.”
Ms Giuffre said at the end of March she had four days to live after a car accident, posting on social media that “I’ve gone into kidney renal failure”. She was discharged from hospital eight days later.
Raised mainly in Florida, she said she was abused by a family friend early in life, which led to her living on the streets at times as a teenager.
She said that in 2000, she met Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite who was convicted in 2021 on federal sex trafficking and conspiracy charges and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein. Pic: US Department of Justice
Ms Giuffre said Maxwell then introduced her to Epstein and hired her as his masseuse, and said she was sex trafficked and sexually abused by him and associates around the world.
‘A survivor’
After meeting her husband in 2002, while taking massage training in Thailand at what she said was Epstein’s behest, she moved to Australia and had a family.
She founded the sex trafficking victims’ advocacy charity SOAR in 2015, and is quoted on its website as saying: “I do this for victims everywhere.
“I am no longer the young and vulnerable girl who could be bullied. I am now a survivor, and nobody can ever take that away from me.”
:: Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.
Donald Trump has met Volodymyr Zelenskyy ahead of the Pope’s funeral, Vatican sources have told Sky News.
The US and Ukrainian presidents had a “very productive discussion”, according to a White House Official, and have also agreed to hold further talks after the service.
They are among world leaders, including Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, who are attending the funeral of Pope Francis.
Follow live updates: Zelenskyy among world leaders joining thousands of mourners
There was applause from some of those gathered in St Peter’s Square when the Ukrainian leader walked out.
The former British ambassador to Russia Sir Tony Brenton said the event presents diplomatic opportunities, including the “biggest possible meeting” between Mr Trump and Mr Zelenskyy.
Trump and Zelenskyy meet for first time since Oval Office row. Pic: Reuters
He told Sky News it could mark “an important step” in starting the peace process between Russia and Ukraine, and is their first face-to-face meeting after a very public row between the presidents at the White House in February.
The bilateral meeting comes after Mr Trump’s peace negotiator Steve Witkoff held talks with Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin.
They discussed “the possibility of resuming direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine”, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said.
Russia and Ukraine have not held direct talks since the early weeks of the war, which began in February 2022.
Mr Trump has claimed a deal to end the war is “very close” and has urged Mr Zelenskyy to “get it done” in a post on his Truth Social platform.
He has previously warned both sides his administration would walk away from its efforts to achieve a peace if the two sides do not agree a deal soon.
Meanwhile, the Polish Armed Forces said a Russian military helicopter violated its airspace over the Baltic Sea on Friday evening, in a post on X.
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US
Donald Trump says Russia and Ukraine are ‘very close to a deal’ – and says ‘two sides should now meet’
Donald Trump has said Russia and Ukraine are “very close to a deal” with “most of the major points agreed” – as he called for the two sides to meet.
Shortly after arriving in Rome for Pope Francis’s funeral, the US president said high-level officials should now meet to “finish [the deal] off”.
“A good day in talks and meetings with Russia and Ukraine,” Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
“They are very close to a deal, and the two sides should now meet, at very high levels, to ‘finish it off’.
“Most of the major points are agreed to. Stop the bloodshed, NOW. We will be wherever is necessary to help facilitate the END to this cruel and senseless war!”
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Ukraine-Russia peace talks explained
Throughout the week, the US president has criticised both Ukraine and Russia for failing to agree to a peace deal.
On Wednesday, he accused Mr Zelenskyy of harming talks on Truth Social, saying “the man with ‘no cards to play’ should now, finally, GET IT DONE”.
A day later, after nine people were killed in Kyiv after a Russian missile and drone strike, Mr Trump said: “Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Let’s get the Peace Deal DONE!”
The president and other officials have also threatened to withdraw from negotiations if no progress is made toward a deal.
It comes after Mr Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss a US-brokered peace plan for Ukraine.
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Putin-Witkoff meeting
The talks allowed Russia and the United States to “further bring their positions closer together” on “a number of international issues”, a Kremlin aide said.
Speaking earlier on the flight to Italy, Mr Trump said he hadn’t been fully briefed on Mr Witkoff and Mr Putin’s meeting – but added it was a “pretty good meeting”.
Read more:
US and Russia talks moving in ‘right direction’, top diplomat says
A ‘barbaric’ 24 hours in a ‘horrendous’ war
Russia and Ukraine have not held direct talks since the early weeks of the war, which began in February 2022.
Ukraine has repeatedly said it would not accept a deal conceding land or handing over sovereignty to Russia.
However, Mr Trump said in an interview with TIME magazine that “Crimea will stay with Russia,” describing the region as a place where Moscow has “had their submarines” and “the people speak largely Russian”.
“Zelenskyy understands that, and everybody understands that it’s been with them for a long time,” he added. “It’s been with them long before Trump came along.”
When asked on Friday about Mr Trump’s comments, Mr Zelenskyy did not want to comment but repeated that recognising occupied Ukrainian territory as Russian is a red line.
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