Trump’s first term made him the villain of liberal Hollywood – don’t bank on it happening again

When, in 2016, business tycoon and reality TV star Donald Trump was elected US president for the first time, the reaction in Hollywood was swift and unified. Celebrities both big and small rushed to condemn the Trump presidency; it was an industry-wide barrage of outrage and opprobrium that swelled throughout his four turbulent years in office. Those on the other side of the aisle, meanwhile, were largely anomalies – oddballs and has-beens and one-man scandal machine Kanye West. Supporting Trump might not have quite been career suicide, but to endorse him was to make yourself an outsider in an industry monopolised by liberals, albeit wealthy ones.

Now it’s four years since Trump left office, and as the US readies itself for the return of the polarising populist leader, it feels as though the vibe has somewhat shifted. After the election, the Motion Picture Association, a group representing the five major American studios (plus Netflix, MGM and Prime Video), issued a surprisingly chipper statement about “look[ing] forward to working with [the Trump administration]”. A few days later, yet more eyebrows were raised after a revelation by Sebastian Stan, who portrayed Trump in the recent film The Apprentice. The movie, which also stars Succession’s Jeremy Strong, depicts a small chunk of Trump’s life, including the alleged rape of his then wife Ivana. Stan said that he had been invited onto Variety’s prestigious Actors on Actors series – a yearly run of interviews in which actors vying for awards sit down and speak to each other – but had ultimately been unable to, due to other actors’ publicists refusing to let their clients talk about Trump. “I couldn’t find another actor to do it with me, because they were too afraid to go and talk about this movie,” he said, with Variety’s editor confirming this to be the case.

It all signals a worrying change of direction for the coming years. The era of vocal and ubiquitous opposition to Trump – a political impetus sometimes referred to as “Resist liberalism” – may be dead. In the aftermath of the election, Rachel Zegler, a young actor who dazzled as the lead in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story and is set to play Snow White in a live-action Disney remake, wrote on social media about the “four years of hatred” a Trump administration would bring, and the “deep, deep sickness” in contemporary America. “May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace,” she wrote. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that back in 2016, this kind of tone was nothing out of the ordinary for a young, progressive actor in Hollywood. This time, though, it was hastily followed by an apology. “I firmly believe that everyone has the right to their opinion, even when it differs from my own,” she wrote. “I am committed to contributing positively towards a better tomorrow.”

It’s not necessarily that anti-Trump sentiment in Hollywood has actually been diluted among celebrities themselves. Joe Rogan, the controversial podcaster who endorsed Trump hours before the election, has suggested as much, claiming that many celebrities – “f***ing hippies, artists [and] musicians” – had privately reached out to thank him for the endorsement, and that “they said they want to [voice support for Trump] but they don’t want to be attacked”. Like most of what Rogan says on his podcast, this should of course be taken with an industrial-size container of road salt. But within it, there could well be some kernel of truth. For years, hating on Trump was as much a brand for some people as it was a consistent moral conviction.

Rarely is the divide between liberalism and leftism rendered more starkly than in the corridors of the American entertainment industry. Many of the selfsame celebrities who were up in arms about Trump’s immigration detention policies – the “children in cages” refrain, for instance, justifiably expressing outrage over the detainment of migrant kids (and adults) who had crossed over the southern border – were silent when these same policies were adopted by Democratic administrations. Trump was a fair and deserving target, but he was also an easy one, a figure whose personal transgressions and bare crassness made him a quick and uncontroversial object of mockery and hatred. Many of those who had been (I hesitate to use the word radicalised, but rather) nudged into political outspokenness under Trump v1 failed to take such an acute interest in the myriad failings of the Biden administration.

The problem is not with any individual celebrity – doubtless, there will be plenty who will continue to castigate Trump’s new administration, and there was certainly no shortage of despair and condemnation whizzing around after the results of election day. But if Stan’s Variety no-show is anything to go by, there has been a noteworthy change in directive when it comes to Hollywood’s power-behind-the-power. Ultimately, you can bet that studios will simply follow the path of maximum profitability; if there’s more money to be made in accepting Trump than resisting him, then you’d be a fool to expect any sort of moral consistency. And for all his flaws and transgressions, if there’s one thing Donald Trump knows, it’s how to sell something.