Maria Bakalova on ‘The Apprentice’: ‘People are a little bit anxious to talk about this movie’

There’s been a lot of buzz surrounding Ali Abbasi’s Sebastian Stan-fronted Trump biopic, The Apprentice. And yet, so many Hollywood stars, studio execs, and media outlets are hesitant to comment on the film due to its contentious subject matter—something star Maria Bakalova is well aware of.

From the get-go, The Apprentice was bound to be divisive. The not-quite-a-biopic, which was first announced back in May 2018, struggled to find distribution for years, and was supposedly passed on by filmmakers such as Paul Thomas Anderson and Clint Eastwood before finding its director in Ali Abbasi. When The Apprentice eventually released in theaters in Oct. 2024, it faced a bevy of legal woes and threatened lawsuits from Trump’s campaign team, with the man himself even slamming the movie for being a “politically disgusting hatchet job.” Yep, sounds like something Trump would say!

Sebastian Stan, who plays a younger version of the future president in the film, recently snagged a Golden Globe for his performance in A Different Man. He (rightfully) used his time on stage to give a shoutout to The Apprentice while also championing disability representation in Hollywood, saying: “These are tough subject matters, but these films are real and they are necessary, and we can’t be afraid and look away”—a sentiment echoed by his co-star and Ivana Trump actress Maria Bakalova.

Maria Bakalova on getting controversial with The Apprentice

Speaking with The Mary Sue‘s Rachel Leishman, Bakalova opened up about her experience working with James Gunn for the perhaps equally as raunchy Creature Commandos, where she also appeared not only willing, but happy to discuss all things The Apprentice. When complimented on her role in the film, Bakalova admitted: “People are a little bit anxious to talk about this movie, so watching it…thank you, it means a lot.”

It’s not exactly surprising that the upper echelon of Hollywood’s entertainment industry is too afraid to talk about The Apprentice, as folks sacrificing their moral compasses in order to protect their image is a tale as old as time. Still, given that dozens, if not hundreds of public figures have come out to publicly renounce Trump over the years, it feels like hypocrisy in the highest sense for, say, Kate Winslet or Daniel Craig to not want to sit down with Stan for Variety‘s Actors on Actors series out of fear, which, yes, is a very real thing that happened. And Bakalova definitely seems to have some Thoughts on the whole thing.

Maria Bakalova is staying busy thanks to James Gunn’s DC Universe

Still, The Apprentice is far from the only thing that Bakalova has gotten up to this year. She recently (joined? re-joined?) James Gunn’s DC Universe for Creature Commandos, an animated TV-MA series following the rag-tag black ops team that would eventually go on to become the Suicide Squad. In the show, Bakalova plays Princess Ilana, a power-hungry monarch set on world domination. It’s a total 180 from her heroic character in 2021’s The Suicide Squad, so it only makes sense that Bakalova got a kick out of playing a villain like Ilana, who she admitted is the complete opposite of her real-life persona.

“It’s interesting. I feel like I am pretty animated myself, and I do have this puppy energy usually. So I’m trying to slow myself a little bit down, and playing a human, especially playing a women that is very much aware of who she is, and using her femininity and her charm to manipulate people is a very different thing to my natural habitat, in a way. But it’s been really exciting to play such a badass-villain-femme fatale-princess, who is beautiful on the outside but is not that beautiful on the inside.”

Bakalova also opened up about her reaction to seeing her character’s dynamic with Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo) when watching Creature Commandos for the first time, and I think it’s safe to say that she said what we’ve all been thinking: “I was like…blushing while watching it. Because it’s—I mean, it’s hot. At the end of the day it’s actually pretty hot.” So true, bestie.

All episodes of Creature Commandos season 1 are currently available to stream on Max.