Entertainment

Get to Know the Real Story Behind The Apprentice Movie Based On Donald Trump’s Life

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5m ago

Nov 05, 2024 / 7498 Views

Evan Walker

The Apprentice (2024) movie is a biographical drama tracing the early years of 2024 US Presidential nominee Donald Trump as he transforms from a young businessperson to an omnipresent public figure. The film highlight his formative years, from the 1970s and 1980s in his real estate business and his association with notorious lawyer Roy Cohn which shaped his tactics towards power, publicity, and litigation. It is, at the same time, a character study and a chronicle of Trump’s early business decisions, which formed the groundwork for the man who would later become one of the most polarising figures in modern history. Here is everything you need to know about the real story behind The Apprentice (2024) as well as its cast, release date, official trailer and more.

Helmed by Ali Abbasi, who wrote it with Maren Louise Käehne, the film stars Sebastian Stan as Trump and Jeremy Strong (Kendall Roy of HBO’s Succession) as Cohn in lead roles.

The Apprentice (2024): The real story behind the movie

Donald Trump’s early ambitions

At the start of the 1970s, young Donald Trump, son of real estate tycoon Fred Trump was eager to take his family’s business beyond New York City’s outer boroughs. While Fred (played by Martin Donovan who you might know from Christopher Nolan films like Memento and Tenet) made his money developing affordable housing projects, Donald wanted to get into Manhattan’s high-end real estate market in order to earn himself a reputation as a powerful business leader.

This interest in wealth and glory pushed Donald Trump’s ambitions further. However, his business practices even then were not free from controversies. In 1973, the US Department of Justice indicted Trump Management, his family’s real estate company, for discriminatory practices against African-American tenants. A federal investigation claimed that Trump Management kept black families away from renting apartments while giving preference to white tenants, a case that could have destroyed the family name of the Trumps.

True story of The Apprentice Movie donald trump — Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump and Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn. (Image: Courtesy of © Apprentice Productions Ontario Inc. / Profile Productions 2 APS / Tailored Films Ltd. 2023/ IMDb)

Roy Cohn: The mentor with ruthless tactics

It was during this time that a champion emerged for Trump in the form of Roy Cohn, an attorney infamous for the ruthlessness of his methods. Cohn was a man who had been both partially responsible for the infamous espionage case of the Rosenbergs in 1953, for which they were executed, and closely associated with Senator Joseph McCarthy during the purges of anti-Communism in the 1950s (for more, read McCarthyism).

This relationship between Trump and Cohn is the central theme of the movie. On-screen, the first scene of their meeting takes place in an exclusive Manhattan restaurant where a frustrated Trump speaks of his frustration with the federal investigation into his family business, which is an accusation by the government. Cohn, sensing the ambition and readiness of Trump to play by the rules and then break them, offers himself as Trump’s legal counsellor and coach.

Cohn schooled Trump in approaching challenges with a combative mindset: his three principles were always attack, never retreat, and always stand your ground, even if you have lost. This philosophy became the basis of Trump’s public persona. With Cohn, Trump’s real estate operations became bolder and bolder. He launched high-profile projects: renovated what was then the Commodore Hotel and is now the Grand Hyatt, and built Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue.

The impact of their relationship

The partnership of Trump and Cohn was not only professional but a personal alliance based on mutual benefit. Cohn provided Trump with legal protection and political connections to help him secure deals and manage legal issues. In return, Trump opened to him a network of rich iNFLuential figures.

But Cohn’s private life was strewn with Scandals, and among them were his disbarment and public outing as a closeted homosexual in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. Even so, Trump publicly broke with him only when the lawyer’s iNFLuence began to wane ᅳ a step that reminded one of Trump’s later modus operandi of casting off those no longer serving his purposes.

The real events depicted in the film

The Apprentice opens with the real-life federal lawsuit against Trump Management, a pivotal moment in Donald Trump’s early career. The case was eventually settled without an admission of wrongdoing, but the film depicts how Trump leveraged his connections with Cohn to manage the fallout and maintain his public image.

Another significant aspect of the movie is Trump’s ability to use media attention to his advantage. As seen in the film, Trump courted journalists and cultivated an image as a brash, successful entrepreneur, even when his projects were financially risky or legally contentious. This manipulation of media perception became one of Trump’s key tools throughout his career.

The film also explores Trump’s personal life, including his marriage to Ivana Trump (played by Maria Bakalova, who rose to fame with 2021’s comedy movie Borat Subsequent Moviefilm). It shows how Trump’s relationships were often transactional, driven by status and appearances. His marriage to Ivana, a Czech model and Businesswoman, was an important part of building his public image in the 1980s. There is an extremely disturbing rape scene in the movie.

Themes of power, influence, and control

At its heart, The Apprentice is not just a Donald Trump biopic and not even a dramatisation of his relationship with Cohn — it is a commentary on the dynamics of power, influence, and ambition in America. Trump and Cohn embody the idea that success in US politics and business often comes at the cost of integrity and conscience. The film depicts Trump as a product of the 1980s — this was the time in America when greed, ambition, and personal branding were in and fairness and transparency were out — so to speak.

The movie is also a reflection on how powerful figures like Trump can mobilise their connections, media narratives and legal measures to craft personas that common people can identify with in some sort of way. For instance, while Trump has wealth that would dwarfs most Americans’ imagination, his brash attitude, anti-establishment rhetoric and claims of being a self-made success story resonates with many common people in the country.

Trump’s rise to fame during this period set him up for his future political career, where strategies of media manipulation, attack tactics, and incessant self-promotion would be even more apparent.