Trump campaign launches cease and desist at Jeremy Strong’s The Apprentice

Presumably operating from the philosophical position that you can only get so wet, in terms of, uh, ongoing legal action, the Donald Trump campaign has reportedly lobbed a cease and desist order at The Apprentice, Ali Abbasi’s cinematic depiction of the relationship between Trump (played by Sebastian Stan) and his real-estate mentor Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong, in his first major role since Succession ended last year). The film debuted this week at Cannes, to moderately strong reviews—many holding out especial praise for Strong—but despite the man’s historical obsession with ratings and reviews, the Trump people clearly aren’t happy, moving to try to block The Apprentice from ever being shown in the United States.

This is per Deadline, which reports that Trump’s team sent the film’s producers—currently seeking American distribution—a letter on May 22, calling their movie “a concoction of lies” and stating that they’ll take “all appropriate legal remedies” to stop distribution of this “libelous farce.” Abbasi is also accused at one point of making “racist, Marxist, and otherwise disparaging statements against President Trump in 2018,” and the film as a whole is accused of being “direct foreign interference in America’s elections.”

Among other things, the cease and desist asserts that Abbisi’s film “presents itself as a factual biography of Mr. Trump,” although we can’t imagine anyone involved actually believes that’s true; behind the ridiculous fantasy that Trump could ever have looked like Sebastian Stan on his worst day, it’s been clear from the jump that Abbasi is interested in drawing metaphorical threads out from the public record of Cohn and Trump’s relationship. (That being said, and as noted in our own review, the film does include at least a few moments likely to carry genuine controversial weight: Most notably by dramatizing Ivana Trump’s allegations, made during her divorce from Trump, that he raped her during their marriage; Ivana later recanted the allegations.)

The Apprentice is headed toward release during an election cycle that already feels exhaustingly Trump-filled, so we’re genuinely curious how much interest audiences actually have in watching what’s reportedly a pretty clear-eyed look at the man and his many neuroses, evils, and warts. Certainly, we doubt this cease and desist will do anything but spur interest in the film, while simultaneously giving Trump’s supporters another thing to fume about; that’s the playbook, after all.