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The Apprentice

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Long before he was a billionaire, the star of a reality TV show or the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump (Sebast...

Long before he was a billionaire, the star of a reality TV show or the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump (Sebastian Stan) was a young streamer in the 1970s determined to enrich himself in the New York real estate market. At the time, most saw the Big Apple as down and out, a blighted urban center full of violent crime. But Trump believed the city was ready for a comeback and that he was the man to lead the renaissance, if only he had the right support. His father Fred thought it was an idiotic plan - all the more reason for young Donald to succeed at all costs. Determined to get out of his powerful father's shadow, in the early days of his career he meets the man who will become one of the most important figures in his life: political fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong).

This influential lawyer - who arranged for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, suspected of espionage, to be put in the electric chair and worked with Senator Joseph McCarthy to investigate suspected communists - sees promise in young Donald and takes him under his corrupt wings. He teaches his new apprentice how to amass wealth and power through deception, intimidation and media manipulation. Cohn teaches Trump the three rules by which he lives: 1) Attack, attack, attack; 2) Admit nothing, deny everything; and 3) Whatever happens, you claim victory and never admit defeat. It is a sickeningly familiar playbook for anyone who has watched the news for the past decade. The rest is history.

For director Abbasi (Gräns, Holy Spider), The Apprentice was never intended to be a conventional telling of Donald Trump's full life story. Not a biopic, in other words. Instead, he wanted to delve into one formative and crucial chapter in the man's life - one that would have broad implications for America and the world at large. "We're not interested in every detail of his life from A to Z. We're interested in telling a very specific story through his relationship with Roy Cohn and Roy's relationship with him."

The figure of Roy Cohn, played here by Succession actor Jeremy Strong, has more often been the subject of loathsome fascination. The most famous reference to Cohn can be found in Tony Kushner's play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. In it he is portrayed as a self-hating, power-hungry, and hypocritical man who disavows his sexual preference for men. The ghost of Ethel Rosenberg interrogates him, while Cohn twists his cause of death (AIDS) and states he is suffering from liver cancer. The play was filmed in 2003. The role of Cohn was played by Al Pacino and that of Ethel Rosenberg by Meryl Streep.

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