Does The Apprentice tell Donald Trump’s true story? The most controversial scenes explained
The former President has dismissed Ali Abbasi’s film as ‘pure fiction’. Kevin E G Perry explores if that’s really true
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Donald Trump isn’t happy about The Apprentice.
In a statement to The Independent, Trump campaign chief spokesperson Steven Cheung said: “We filed a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers. This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked.”
Nevertheless, the film from Iranian director Ali Abbasi has now secured an international release, hitting US cinemas on October 11 and arriving in the UK a week later.
The Apprentice is set during the early years of Trump’s business career, starring Sebastian Stan as the budding real estate mogul and Succession’s Jeremy Strong as his mentor, the lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn.
The film’s producers have described it as being “inspired” by real events, despite the Trump campaign’s assertion that it’s “pure fiction.” So, how much of the story is really true?
Was Donald Trump mentored by Roy Cohn?
Roy Cohn was a lawyer, born and raised in the Bronx, who gained prominence in the 1950s for his role as Senator Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel during his investigations into suspected communists. By the time Trump met him in 1973, Cohn was one of New York’s most significant political power brokers and the young mogul was keen to learn everything he could from him.
In 2019, Where’s My Roy Cohn documentary director Matthew Tyrnauer told NPR: “Donald Trump is Roy Cohn. He completely absorbed all of the lessons of Cohn, which were attack, always double down, accuse your accusers of what you are guilty of, and winning is everything. And Trump absorbed these lessons and has applied them in every aspect of his life and career.”
Did Donald Trump rape his first wife Ivana?
One of the most controversial sequences in The Apprentice depicts Trump sexually assaulting his first wife Ivana (played by Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’s Maria Bakalova).
In the scene, Ivana presents her husband with a book about the female orgasm. The couple argue, with Trump telling his wife that he’s no longer attracted to her. He then throws her to the ground, thrusts himself into her and sneers: “Is that your G spot? Did I find it?”
Ivana Trump, who died in 2022, did accuse her then-husband of raping her in a 1989 divorce deposition.
However, when that allegation was published in Harry Hurt III’s 1993 book The Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, Ivana disavowed the claim, saying: “During a deposition given by me in connection with my matrimonial case, I stated that my husband had raped me. On one occasion during 1989, Mr. Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently toward me than he had during our marriage. As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent. I referred to this as a ‘rape,’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”
Did Donald Trump use amphetamines?
In The Apprentice, Trump is portrayed as popping amphetamine pills. The former President has admitted to partying at debaucherous night clubs like New York’s Studio 54 in the 1970s, but has consistently maintained that he doesn’t personally use drugs or even drink. He has attributed his tee-totalism to the death of his older alcoholic brother, Fred Jr, who died in 1981 at the age of 43. In a 2018 press conference, Trump said: “I’m not a drinker. I can honestly say I never had a beer in my life…. Whenever they are looking for something good, I say I never had a glass of alcohol.”
Did Donald Trump get scalp reduction surgery?
Some critics have argued that the scenes in The Apprentice that will make Trump “angriest” are the sequences showing him undergoing liposuction and a scalp reduction to reduce his bald spot. Like the sexual assault claim, the source for this story is his first wife Ivana’s divorce deposition. In 1990, she said under oath that Trump had flown into a fit of rage after undergoing the painful surgery in 1989. Also known as alopecia reduction, the operation is intended to address balding by cutting out the bald spot and sewing the remaining skin back together around it.
The procedure has been known to lead to headaches due to the tightened scalp. It was allegedly performed by Ivana’s own doctor, Dr Steven Hoefflin, who also put Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, and Joan Rivers under the knife. Ivana also claimed that Trump underwent liposuction on his chin and waist.
The Apprentice is in cinemas in the US from October 11 and in the UK from October 18
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