II’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t want to watch The Apprentice, the new film chronicling the rise of Donald Trump in 1970s and 1980s New York. Like most people in my liberal social circle, my reaction to the film’s existence was essentially : why? Why watch two hours of an inelegant (yet still recognizable) Sebastian Stan as the young real estate mogul, and Jeremy Strong as his mentor Roy Cohn, going through events that I already know – if not in exact detail, at least in spirit – into the life of a man I wish I knew less about?
Still, I found the film, written by Vanity Fair’s Trump columnist Gabriel Sherman and directed by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi, surprising. Not in the material — even if you weren’t the most informed about Trump before his 2015 presidential campaign, his public character has long been consistent — but in his straightforward approach to portraying the former president’s life. While predictably dismissed by Republican figures and Trump himself as a hack job (or more specifically, “a cheap, defamatory, and politically repugnant hatchet job released just before the 2024 presidential election to attempt to harm the Greatest Political Movement in History of our country,” as Trump wrote in Truth Social), The Apprentice is an overall sincere film that attempts to portray a highly controversial figure as close to the emotional truth as possible while remaining entertaining. As Sherman told me before its release: “It’s such a universal story about the apprentice surpassing the master… I hope people can experience it on their own terms and not bring all their political baggage to it.”
A nice sentiment, which meant, unfortunately, that it would never sit well with the highly polarized American public. I remember thinking, as I watched Stan do as decent a job as possible playing a man whose tics are known to tens of millions, while Strong effectively conveyed Cohn’s lizard-like gaze and calm cruelty, that it really wouldn’t matter how Well The Apprentice accomplished its self-appointed mission of delving deeper into the character of Donald Trump. The American public, most of whom are not interested in letting go of political baggage so close to an election, would not accept it; This could only appeal to people outside the US, who either don’t have to think about him every day or don’t have some native understanding of Trump’s distinctly American celebrity.
To wit: the film, after a prolonged and difficult distribution hunt that nearly killed it, grossed just $1.6 million from 1,740 U.S. theaters during its opening weekend — a flop, especially for a film with aspirations to awards. Unsurprisingly, it found most of its viewers in large urban liberal enclaves, such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington DC. But The Apprentice performed relatively well overseas – it grossed $835,000 in its opening weekend in the UK, behind The Wild Robot and Smile 2 (the rule of thumb is generally to view it as representing a tenth of the box office of the USA) and more than US$623,000. in 319 cinemas in France.
Part of the film’s domestic box office problems are due to commercial issues beyond the filmmakers’ control. After a stellar debut and positive critical reception at the Cannes Film Festival in May, The Apprentice struggled to find distribution, partly due to Trump’s political influence and partly due to the market’s old-fashioned timidity. Days after the premiere, reports emerged that the film’s main financier, Kinematics — founded by the son-in-law of billionaire Trump donor Dan Snyder — objected to a scene depicting Trump’s alleged rape of his wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova). (The scene, like everything on The Apprentice, is based on some historical record; Ivana recounted the event in a 1990 divorce deposition under oath.) Simultaneously, Trump’s legal team issued a cease and desist order, threatening legal action. . The objections had the intended chilling effect – according to the filmmakers, all major American distributors and streaming services were approved.
The Apprentice only made it to theaters thanks to a Kickstarter campaign (dubbed “Release the Apprentice”), a last-minute purchase from Kinetics, and an 11th-hour rescue by renegade indie channel Briarcliff Entertainment. The machinations effectively gave Briarcliff just five weeks to market the film – a brief period made even more difficult by North American networks that refused to air spots during political coverage, not to mention calls for a boycott from Republicans like Mike Huckabee.
But the film is ultimately an outsider’s perspective on Donald Trump (most of the cast and crew come from Europe or Canada) – perhaps crucial to dealing fairly with recent American history, though it’s always difficult to sell to the US audience – made with appeals to objectivity and curiosity that will only work for those outside the US context. The Apprentice is generally well made and well acted, and generally zealous in vivifying the extensive reporting done on the most famous living American. It is not no it’s worth watching, as a film about a student gradually eclipsing his teacher in a bankrupt New York, and yet it’s not particularly insightful on its subject. Although, to be fair, little is – despite Republicans’ ongoing delusions of seriousness, Trump has clearly been who he is for a long, long time and has been in the news daily for a decade. There is nothing to say that hasn’t already been said.
Still, I agree, rationally, with the filmmakers’ pleas to give it an opportunity, to resist corporate censorship, to see the film as an opportunity to critique, as Abbasi put it, the “social Darwinism that is embedded in society.” American society, that didn’t come with Trump and it won’t end with Trump.” Accepting this, to paraphrase executive producer James Shani, may not teach you anything new, but it will make you feel something different. (Discomfort, for example, or the limitations of pre-existing exhaustion.) But I also understand why, all good artistic and open-minded intentions aside, this is falling on deaf ears in this country.
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