The director of the upcoming Trump biopic The Apprentice has claimed the controversial movie is “not a hit piece” and isn’t even very “anti-Trump” — despite portraying the young Donald Trump as a rapist.
Ali Abbasi also accused Hollywood studios of artistic censorship in an interview with The Wrap at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the movie is screening ahead of its planned October 11 release in the U.S.
Abassi, who hails from Iran, said he didn’t imagine his movie about Trump would have so much trouble getting made.
“I thought – ‘Fuck Iran. Fuck the Islamic dictatorship.’ I thought, ‘I’ll make a movie in a free country,'” he told the outlet.
He revealed he approached the studios for financing six years ago.
“They said to me, ‘We would love to do this film, but if Trump wins, if the studio gets sold – they’ll come after us.’ Or they would say, ‘We don’t want 85 million consumers to hate us.’”
In the end, the financing was cobbled together from mostly overseas film companies, as well as some domestic ones. When it came to distribution, The Apprentice faced a similar round of rejection from the major studios and streamers. Eventually, the indie label Briarcliff Entertainment picked it up for domestic distribution.
“We’re here, yes, but I would call it a sort of censorship,” Abassi added.
In the end, he told The Wrap, the movie is not terribly anti-Trump.
“It’s an entertaining character piece. It’s not a hit piece,” said Abbasi. “Donald is really ‘made in America.’”
The Apprentice has generated controversy since its splashy world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, where it failed to win any prizes or score a domestic distribution deal. The fictionalized movie follows Trump (Sebastian Stan) during his rise to power during the 70s and early 80s, focusing on his relationship with Roy Cohn (Succession star Jeremy Strong).
One scene shows Donald Trump raping his wife Ivanka Trump — a claim Ivanka Trump publicly denied. Other scenes show Donald Trump undergoing plastic surgery.
During the movie’s Cannes premiere, Abassi denounced Trump as a fascist to the screening audience.
“There is no nice, metaphorical way to deal with the rising wave of fascism,” Abbasi said. “There is only the messy way, there is only the banal way, there is only the way of dealing with this wave on its own terms, at its own level.”
The movie’s screenplay was written by Vanity Fair correspondent Gabriel Sherman.
As Breitbart News reported, lawyers for former President Donald Trump have sent a cease and desist letter to the filmmakers of The Apprentice in an effort to block the movie’s release, warning the producers not to pursue a domestic distribution deal.
Earlier, the Trump campaign threatened to sue the makers of The Apprentice following its Cannes premiere.
“We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers,” the Trump campaign’s chief spokesperson Steven Cheung said, “This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked.”
Cheung also called the movie “malicious defamation.”