Controversial drama The Apprentice has bombed stateside but it’s attracting bigger audiences in other parts of the world

I’ll be the first to admit that I did not want to watch The Apprentice, the new film chronicling Donald Trump’s ascendancy through 1970s and 80s New York. Like most people in my liberal social circle, my reaction to the movie’s existence was essentially: why? Why watch two hours of a de-handsomed (though still recognizable) Sebastian Stan as the young real estate mogul, and Jeremy Strong as his mentor Roy Cohn, go through events I already know – if not in exact detail, than certainly in spirit – in the life of a man I actively wish I knew less about?

And yet I found the film, written by Vanity Fair’s Trump chronicler Gabriel Sherman and directed by Iranian Danish film-maker Ali Abbasi, to be surprising. Not in material – even if you’re not the most well read on Trump prior to his presidential campaign in 2015, his public character has long been consistent – but in its straightforward approach to depict the life of the former president. Though predictably dismissed by Republican figures and Trump himself as a hack job (or more specifically, “a cheap, defamatory and politically disgusting hatchet job, put out right before the 2024 Presidential Election, to try and hurt the Greatest Political Movement in the History of our Country”, as Trump wrote on Truth Social), The Apprentice is an overall sincere movie, attempting to depict a highly contentious figure as close to the emotional truth as possible, while remaining entertaining. As Sherman told me before its release: “It’s such a universal story about the apprentice outstripping the master … I hope people can experience it on its own terms and not bring all their political baggage to it.”