Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice, which stars Sebastian Stan as a young Donald Trump opposite Jeremy Strong’s Roy Cohn, is not expected to be a positive portrayal of Trump. You might infer this from the fact that it’s directed by an acclaimed international auteur, or that it’s premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, or maybe that it’s about Trump and Cohn. As the film makes its grand debut on the Croisette, however, this was apparently news to one person involved in its production: billionaire former NFL owner Dan Snyder, a Trump ally whose production company, Kinematics, helped fund the film.
Snyder’s 24-year stewardship of the team now known as the Washington Commanders was filled with allegations of mismanagement and sexual misconduct, earning him a reputation as the worst owner in pro sports. Per Variety, his foray into film producing has not gone much better. The trade reports that Snyder, who donated over $1 million to Trump’s inauguration in 2017, financed the film “under the impression that it was a flattering portrayal of the 45th president.” After seeing an early cut of The Apprentice in February, Snyder allegedly attempted to fight the release of the film, which reportedly includes a “violent” and “uncomfortable” scene between Trump and his wife Ivana, played by Maria Bakalova. (Ivana accused her ex-husband of “violating” her in a 1989 deposition but recanted in 2015.) In a statement to Variety, Kinematics president Emanuel Nuñez insisted that “all creative and business decisions involving The Apprentice have always been and continue to be solely made by Kinematics,” though the mag’s sources say Snyder did indeed have issues with “multiple aspects of the film.” In a sign of what kind of project the company thought it was making, Kinematics had earlier produced The Scary of Sixty-First, in which one of the hosts of the Red Scare podcast masturbates in a house said to be previously owned by Jeffrey Epstein.