Bucky Barnes, Carter Baizen, Donald Trump. Three controversial New Yorkers made flesh by Sebastian Stan. Stan has signed on to play a young Donald Trump in The Apprentice, directed by Holy Spider’s Ali Abbasi. The film centers on the mentor-mentee relationship between Trump and fixer lawyer Roy Cohn, played by Sucession’s Jeremy Strong. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm star Maria Bakalova will play Trump’s first wife, Ivana. According to Deadline, production began earlier this week.
Cohn wove his way through the 20th century, getting his little fingers into everything from HUAC to Studio 54. He mentored Trump while he was beginning his real estate career in the ’70s and ’80s. “Other than his father, the most important influence on the future president was Roy Cohn,” Maggie Haberman wrote in her biography of Trump. Politico reports that Cohn was the one who taught Trump to flout the rule of law and was described by those who knew him as “a snake,” “a scoundrel,” and “a new strain of son of a bitch.” So that will be fun for Strong to play.