Oscar Nominee Sebastian Stan Reflects on Playing Trump in ‘The Apprentice’
February 12, 2025 – Sebastian Stan reflects on his journey playing Donald Trump in ‘The Apprentice’ and is nominated for Best Actor.
Many were shocked to find out Sebastian Stan was nominated for Best Actor for his performance as Donald J. Trump in ‘The Apprentice’. As Collider notes, mainstream Hollywood seemed terrified of the movie, but the Oscars have purposely decided to draw attention to it. This goes to show how profound and unignorable Stan’s performance was, despite the controversial context.
Stan is going up against four previously nominated candidates: Adrien Brody (‘The Brutalist’), Colman Domingo (‘Sing Sing’), Ralph Fiennes (‘Conclave’), and Timothée Chalamet (‘A Complete Unknown’).
Playing Trump in ‘The Apprentice’ was no easy task for Stan. The actor revealed on Variety‘s Awards Circuit Podcast that “This film has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” He faced a lot of scrutiny: “I had people telling me not to do it,” and “that it was too dangerous.” Though the thought of playing Trump scared him, Stan did not relent.
“To some extent I thrive on fear, on being told I can’t do it,” Stan said, reported The New York Times. And indeed, Stan gave an Oscar-worthy performance. Still, it seemed at first that Hollywood would not give him the recognition he deserved. In Variety’s ‘Actors on Actors’ series, Stan was noticeably missing. Apparently, the other actors in the series preferred not to talk about Trump, revealed Variety’s co-editor in chief Ramin Setoodeh. This surprised Stan. “I found it distressing that the business of Hollywood didn’t have the courage to support this movie,” he said, reported to The New York Times. When he was recognized by the community with an Oscar nominee, he felt incredibly thankful.
Sebastian Stan Reflects on Trump’s “loss of humanity”
Reflecting on his performance, Sebastian Stan told The New York Times that he saw Trump’s life journey as “the solidifying of a person into stone, the loss of humanity.” To this, Stan added that he recognized Trump’s thirst for power: “I understood something about the script, about this person who was so desperate to get up there that he was not going to stop at anything.”
The movie and Stan’s representation of Trump got them in hot water with the re-elected president. The New York Times reported that Trump had threatened to sue the apparent work of “pure fiction”. Stan told them that: “I would argue that even though I’m sure he’s seen the movie, maybe a few times — I have no idea by the way, this is me totally speculating — one of the issues he’s probably had with the film is it really shows you the opportunistic evolution of this person.”
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Published by HOLR Magazine
Image Credit: Briarcliff Entertainment YouTube