Irish produced The Apprentice receives threats of legal action from Trump campaign over depiction of assault

The Apprentice, a contentious Donald Trump biopic which includes the Dublin-based Tailored Films among its producers, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival yesterday and has already been threatened with legal action by the Trump campaign.

Directed by the Iranian-Danish film-maker Ali Abbasi, the film depicts Trump's origin story as an ambitious young property developer in ‘70s and ‘80s New York.

Abbasi’s film, which stars Sebastian Stan as Trump, earned an eight minute standing ovation at the festival yesterday, and opened with a disclaimer that the events depicted are fictionalised.

Trump campaign’s chief spokesperson, Steven Cheung, confirmed they would take legal action when speaking to Variety in an interview on Monday.

“This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalises lies that have been long debunked,” he said. “As with the illegal Biden Trials, this is election interference by Hollywood elites, who know that President Trump will retake the White House and beat their candidate of choice because nothing they have done has worked.”

“This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation,” Cheung added, and “should not see the light of day”.

The spokesperson’s harsh reaction is a result of Trumps portrayal in a particularly controversial scene in which he pushes his first wife, Ivana (played by Maria Bakalova), to the ground and rapes her.

The incident was alleged to have taken place in 1989, and was previously detailed in the couple’s divorce proceedings the following year.

In her divorce deposition, Ivana Trump described a similar assault that she said occurred shortly after her husband’s scalp-reduction surgery, where she claimed that Trump pushed her to the floor and pulled out handfuls of her hair.

Ivana initially described what followed as a rape, but later walked back on the claim in a 1993 statement.

She said that “on one occasion during 1989, Mr Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently towards me than he had during our marriage.”

“As a woman I felt violated … I referred to this as a rape, but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense,” she added.

Trump dismissed his wife’s version of the incident as “obviously false” during the couple’s divorce proceedings.

During the standing ovation at Cannes, Abbasi explained that he wanted to make the film about a real person's story instead of using a fictional story "to deal with the rising wave of fascism."

Director Ali Abbasi makes the biggest political statement of #Cannes2024 so far during the 8-minute standing ovation for ‘The Apprentice’: ‘There is no nice metaphorical way to deal with the rising wave of fascism.’ pic.twitter.com/BGny0agRUW

— Ramin Setoodeh (@RaminSetoodeh) May 20, 2024

Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong of Succession fame, who plays Trump’s ruthless mentor and attorney Roy Cohn, both received glowing reviews from Cannes critics.

The Apprentice is one of 22 in competition for the festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or, which will be unveiled by Barbie director Greta Gerwig on Sunday.

In addition to co-producing The Apprentice, Tailored films produced the upcoming rural revenge thriller Bring Them Down starring Barry Keoghan, Chris Abbott and Colm Meaney, which will be released on Mubi.