‘I was literally alone in the theater’: Donald Trump really, really doesn’t want you to watch this movie

The Donald Trump biopic, The Apprentice, released worldwide in theaters on Friday, October 11.

Sebastian Stan plays Trump with aplomb, showcasing the incredibly broad scope of his talent. It takes place between 1970 and 1980 in New York City, following his early rise under his mentor and lawyer, Roy Cohn (played to devastating perfection by Jeremy Strong).

Trump does not want you to see this movie. (Gee, wonder why?) Before the film even hit screens, the communications director of Trump’s reelection campaign, Steven Cheung, threatened to sue the director, Ali Abbasi. Shocking, I know. According to Cheung, the film includes “blatantly false assertions” and “[it] doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store, it belongs in a dumpster fire.”

You know that means that it’s true. As for what else Trump and his team doesn’t want you to see, well, The Apprentice has a lot of them, including plastic surgery, pills, intimacy, and more. All in all, it seems like a typical biopic, and a pretty damning one at that.

So what makes Trump so scared about this film in particular? It’s been no secret that his team has been sending legal threats since Cannes to prevent the film from being screened in the United States. Abbasi even confirmed that they sent a cease and desist letter. The Apprentice has been steeped in controversy from the beginning, despite Abbasi disagreeing with that notion.

All of it can be found on Wikipedia, he says. And, while that is true, we also know that Trump likes to avoid the truth as much as possible. To him, defamation is anything that makes him look bad. Which makes sense once you see Cohn telling Trump that there is no truth, and that all that matters is winning. All that is to say, should The Apprentice have been made? Who knows. Will I see it just to spite Trump and support Sebastian Stan? Absolutely.

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Rachel Tolleson

Rachel (she/her) is a freelancer at The Mary Sue. She has been freelancing since 2013 in various forms, but has been an entertainment freelancer since 2016. When not writing her thoughts on film and television, she can also be found writing screenplays and poetry. She currently lives in Brooklyn with her cats Carla and Thorin Oakenshield but is a Midwesterner at heart. She is also a tried and true emo kid and the epitome of "it was never a phase, Mom," but with a dual affinity for dad rock. If she’s not rewatching Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul she’s probably rewatching Our Flag Means Death.

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