Sebastian Stan takes President Donald Trump’s actions seriously.
“I think we’re in a really, really bad place. I really do,” Stan, 43, expressed to reporters during a press conference on Monday, May 18, for his new film Fjord. “To be honest with you, when you’re looking at what’s happening, right — if we’re talking about the consolidation of the media, censorship, threats, the supposed lawsuits that seemingly never end but don’t actually go anywhere — the writing was on the wall. We encountered all that with the movie.”
Though two years have passed since he portrayed Trump, 79, in the biopic The Apprentice, Stan vividly recalls the efforts made by the U.S. president to prevent the movie from being released.
“Three days before the festival, [we were] unsure if the movie was going to play the festival,” he mentioned through Variety. “So maybe people are paying attention more to that film, I think it will stand the test of time for that. But we went through all of it, right before Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert and so on. So, I wish it wasn’t like that.”
Trump has previously demanded Kimmel’s firing for his controversial jokes, and he also welcomed the cancellation of The Late Show, remarking that Colbert’s “talent was even less than his ratings.”
Stan is no stranger to having Trump criticize his work and projects.
In October 2024, the president used his Truth Social account to condemn The Apprentice, a film that depicts his rise as a real estate mogul in New York City under Roy Cohn’s mentorship.
“A FAKE and CLASSLESS Movie written about me, called, ‘The Apprentice’ (Do they even have the right to use that name without approval?), will hopefully ‘bomb,’” Trump stated at the time. “It’s 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, ‘MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!’”
Frazer Harrison/Getty Images; Ethan Miller/Getty Images Sebastian Stan is trading in his role as a Marvel anti-hero for that of a real-life controversial figure. Stan, best known for playing Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, will portray a young Donald Trump in the upcoming film The Apprentice, directed by filmmaker Ali Abbasi. […]
Stan managed to move past any issues with Trump as he celebrated the premiere of his latest film, Fjord.
The drama, which earned a 10-minute standing ovation, portrays the story of a Romanian immigrant family living in Norway, who faces an investigation and the challenges of the local judicial system.
“There’s always this fine line as an actor of, what is my responsibility and is there a duty to uphold this mirror to the world as we see it?” Stan discussed with Deadline regarding the film. “All we can do is through storytelling, do our part to represent in any way we can, as truthfully as we can, the complexities that we are all dealing with.”
