Sebastian Stan, who stars as Donald Trump in the biographical drama film “The Apprentice,” said the president-elect was “definitely the hardest” person he’s portrayed on screen after he won a Golden Globe for his role in A Different Man on Sunday.
“Without a doubt, the man in orange,” said Stan when asked by Heart of Hollywood Magazine’s Sandy Rodriguez for the “most challenging” role in his career.
He said he doesn’t intend for his comment to “diminish” his win for his part in Aaron Schimberg’s dark comedy A Different Man, which sees him portraying a man with neurofibromatosis that affects his face before a medical treatment cures him of the rare genetic condition and he leads a new life.
Stan, who got a nod for his role in The Apprentice but lost to The Brutalist actor Adrien Brody, said A Different Man was a risk for him as he tried to “walk in somebody else’s shoes” who has neurofibromatosis like his co-star Adam Pearson.
“But in terms of, when I look back at my sleepless nights and the responsibility that I feel I carried, and I still feel I carry, it is ‘The Apprentice’ and wanting to do the best that I can to honour [director] Ali Abbasi’s vision and to offer further perspective on something that I think we’re all inevitably having to deal with.”
Stan, in an interview with Access Hollywood following his win, said he’ll always be “damn proud” of The Apprentice because it’s a “reflection of the truth that we haven’t been given.”
″[What] I came to love about this country is like, it is full of immigrants, it is about people coming from all over the world, enhancing it, raising it up, offering different perspectives,” said the actor, who immigrated to the U.S. from Romania at age 12.
“It can’t just be one sad story of doom and gloom and fear and fucking unsuppressed rage which is what you see on this damn television all the time.”
Stan has previously revealed that his role in The Apprentice, which struggled to get distribution and was the subject of legal threats from Trump’s camp, found him unable to take part in Variety’s “Actors on Actors” interview series when no other actor wanted to discuss his performance with him.
He told Jimmy Fallon last month that an unnamed studio CEO, citing his work as Buck Barnes/Winter Soldier in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, warned him that he’d “alienate half the country” if he took the Trump role.
Trump himself has slammed the film as “CLASSLESS” and referred to those responsible for it as “HUMAN SCUM” in October. The Apprentice depicts Trump’s time as a real estate developer in the ’70s and ’80s as well as his relationship with his late lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong).