Lawyers for former President Donald Trump have sent a cease and desist letter to the producers of The Apprentice as the film continues to look for U.S. backing.
The movie, which recently had its world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, stars Sebastian Stan as a younger Donald Trump, Succession’s Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn, Trump’s mentor, Maria Bakalova as Ivanka Trump, and Martin Donovan as Fred Trump Sr. The biopic is directed by Ali Abbasi from a script written by Gabriel Sherman.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film’s producers stand by the upcoming project despite the letter, and say that the film hasn’t done anything wrong to warrant any legal intervention.
“The film is a fair and balanced portrait of the former president. We want everyone to see it and then decide,” a representative for the film’s producers said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.
Trump’s legal team has threatened lawsuits previously
The letter is just one step of several that Trump’s team of lawyers have taken to try and stop the film from releasing. Previously, Trump’s presidential campaign had threatened lawsuits over the upcoming film, something that Abbasi doesn’t seem too concerned about.
“Everybody talks about him suing a lot of people — they don’t talk about his success rate though, you know?” said Abbasi during the Cannes press conference for the film.
“Set in a world of corruption and deceit, The Apprentice will examine Trump’s efforts to build his real estate business in New York in the ’70s and ’80s, also digging into his relationship with infamous attorney Roy Cohn,” reads the synopsis. “It’s a mentor-protege story that charts the origins of a major American dynasty. Filled with larger than life characters, it reveals the moral and human cost of a culture defined by winners and losers.”
