I suspect that when Ali Abbasi pitched “The Apprentice,” Donald Trump’s fate was still in the air. Whether the makers of this film and its distributors knew that the Donald would come shrieking back to prominence and dominance, but as the film became available (first in theaters and later in streaming) was undoubtedly a factor in my avoidance of it. It’s too easy to get attention on a subject everyone else is obsessive over.
Something kept drawing me back to the trailer, though: the lifeless, haunting, empty eyes of Roy Cohn, as portrayed by Jeremy Strong. Despite my Donald Trump burnout, I knew I would connect with this performance, and now, the year after its release, I can confirm my original inclination was correct.
“The Apprentice” tells the story not of Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan), the master, but Donald, the student of the living and amoral Cohn. A relatively young and naive Donald Trump is taken under the wing of this shady fixer and, if the story is to be believed, is instructed to the best of Mr. Cohn’s ability to be ruthless, calculated, and jettison any moral qualms to obtain his ends.
The plot is fun, and we get to see a gritty, fast-paced, pre-rejuvenated New York of the 1970s, but the film’s strength is, without a doubt, its two lead performances. Both are up for and deserve a nomination for their respective categories, Best Actor for Stan and Best Supporting Actor for Strong. Sebastian Stan oozes the mannerisms and speaking style of Donald Trump, and he reportedly did his homework studying interviews and speeches of a younger Trump. He truly embodied a slightly more energetic and with-it version of the Trump we know.
Strong is outstanding. If there ever was a case study in complicated figures, the self-loathing, boastful, unapologetic, and fierce Roy Cohn is it. Strong has captured the unique energy of a motivated but troubled social climber. It is undoubtedly the best portrayal of Cohn yet, simultaneously more brutal in its revelations.
On top of the in-trailer car scene where Cohn instructs Trump to “go bigger” with his boasting and promises, we have other great physical and ethical transformation scenes for Donald. He gains weight, gets hair grafted, and keeps taking riskier and riskier bets, sometimes even beyond what Cohn approves of. As Donald rises and Roy fades, partially due to age and illness, we wonder if we have seen the birth of a perfect successor to Cohn or Frankenstein’s monster combination of trumps self-obsession with Cohn’s original Machiavellian system.
The film ends before politics enters Donald’s life directly. Still, Abbasi’s suggestion that we are living in Roy Cohn’s world of winner-take-all amoral ruthlessness via the Trump administration is very much there.
“The Apprentice” is not a political hack job, nor do I suspect it provides the most accurate insight into Donald Trump’s psyche. Still, its exploration of his formative years and complex motivations could not have had a stronger cast of supporting performances.