Gabriel Sherman, Who Trump Calls a “Lowlife and Talentless Hack,” Opens Up About Writing ‘The Apprentice’
Donald Trump has finally weighed in on The Apprentice, the indie biopic in cinemas this weekend that traces the rise of the future 45th president (played by Sebastian Stan) in the New York real estate world of the 1980s via the help of pitbull lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong).
Let’s just say he isn’t thrilled with it.
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“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 posted Sunday night on Truth Social. “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!'”
Trump’s broadside also referenced the film’s depiction of his late, ex-wife Ivana (played by Maria Bakalova). In one shocking Apprentice scene, Trump rapes Ivana on the floor of their home. (The scene is based on a divorce deposition which Ivana later disavowed.)
“My former wife, Ivana, was a kind and wonderful person, and I had a great relationship with her until the day she died. The writer of this pile of garbage, Gabe Sherman, a lowlife and talentless hack, who has long been widely discredited, knew that, but chose to ignore it. So sad that HUMAN SCUM, like the people involved in this hopefully unsuccessful enterprise, are allowed to say and do whatever they want in order to hurt a Political Movement, which is far bigger than any of us. MAGA2024!” he wrote.
Trump’s wishes for a “hopefully unsuccessful enterprise” may have come true, as The Apprentice, which faced a long and rocky road to distribution — including a cease-and-desist attempt from Trump — sputtered in its opening weekend at the box office. Released by Tom Ortenberg’s Briarcliff Entertainment, the film earned $1.6 million from 1,740 screens, just barely cracking the top 10.
Screenwriter Sherman, 45, spoke to The Hollywood Reporter just a few days before the film’s release — and before Trump’s insults.
You’ve done what many journalists have always dreamed of doing: You’re a produced screenwriter.
This movie has lived and died so many different lives that I didn’t even believe it was going to get made until the first day of principal photography. Shortly before production, it looked like we weren’t even going to meet payroll and the movie was going to fall apart. So I never took anything for granted with this movie.
Was this your first stab at screenwriting?
It was my first feature. When I came up with the idea for the film in the spring of 2017, I was adapting my Roger Ailes biography into a limited series at Showtime that starred Russell Crowe. So I was starting to work in television at the time, but really I had no experience writing a feature film. I was learning as I go.
Did you report the screenplay?
I did. I read everything I could about Donald Trump and Roy Cohn and New York City in the 1970s and ’80s. And then I went out interviewing people who knew Donald and Roy during those years and asked them for more anecdotes. So it was a mix of historical research plus my own interviews
I guess I was first introduced to Roy Cohn through Angels in America. He’s such a fascinating, complex, contradictory figure in American history. What’s your take on him?
Well, I kind of feel bad admitting this, but there was a huge gap in my cultural education in that I had not seen Angels in America or read the play prior to writing this screenplay. My knowledge of Roy Cohn was really through journalism and writing about Donald Trump and knowing the influence that Roy had on Trump. And the version of Roy that I wanted to write was a quieter, more contained version with more menace.
What drives him? Is he evil?
I think there’s a deep nihilism at the core of Roy Cohn’s personality. I think it can manifest as evil, but I don’t think he is evil per se. I think he became evil because he hated himself so much. There’s a humanity that is so deep inside Roy that it’s hard to see, but I try to find it as a writer. I try to find the humanity even in the monsters. I find part of the reason our culture is so polarized as we stop trying to understand people that we might disagree with.
Roy grew up at a time when it was impossible to be openly gay person and want to have a successful career. He had to destroy a side of himself that I think made him feel a nihilism. The world was so unfair that it could justify anything. And so I think he rationalized his behavior, which was a complete lack of morality, because he felt that the whole world is fucked. “The world is fucked up. So it doesn’t matter if I break the rules.” I think that’s a tragedy. I think there’s a tragic element to Roy Cohn that I think the movie explores, and Jeremy Strong’s performance is so brilliant.
Both Cohn and Trump are two of the most vilified and loathed figures in American history. And yet I found myself being sympathetic to both of them in certain scenes. Were you worried at all that you were humanizing them too much?
I can only write what feels true to me. So when I was writing the script, I was just writing these characters that felt true to the research that I had done. It’s a love story. Roy loved Donald on multiple levels. There’s a father-son dynamic to their relationship. I also think there’s a homoerotic undercurrent to their relationship. One of the things I came across in my research was that a lot of Roy’s boyfriends — starting with Russell Eldridge, who’s portrayed in the movie —were blonde, blue-eyed, all-American-looking young men. I was struck by the similarities between them and young Donald Trump. I think Roy was in love with Trump. There’s no evidence that he ever acted upon it.
Let’s talk about Apprentice director Ali Abbasi’s interpretation. I saw someone compare this film to Scarface. There’s definitely a kind of gonzo, over-the-top approach to the material. This is not a dry biopic.
When I wrote the film, my inspiration wasn’t biopics per se, but the classic movies of New York cinema. I wanted it to feel like a New York movie. Midnight Cowboy or Dog Day Afternoon, obviously The Godfather, The French Connection and Taxi Driver. I think Ali had this brilliant idea that he wanted the film to expose a system of corruption that was unique to American culture. One of his references was Barry Lyndon. He loves Kubrick, and he talked a lot about young Donald Trump being a character like Barry Lyndon. And the other thing we talked about was that this movie has a Boogie Nights energy to it.
So the film premieres at Cannes and right away Trump’s people start attacking and threatening lawsuits. What was that experience like?
Trump’s campaign sent us the cease and desist letter a day after the premiere. But they released a statement the night of the premiere saying, “It’s all lies, and we’re going to sue.” That’s life imitating art. In the movie, Roy Cohn tells Trump that his number one lesson is to attack. So what do they do? They go on the attack. To my knowledge, no one had seen the film, and Trump himself to this day has not seen the movie, even though we’ve offered to screen it for him.
And we’ve talked about Jeremy Strong, but we haven’t spoken about Sebastian Stan, who I think does a really brilliant job of evoking him but not mimicking him. Who was in your mind when you were writing?
I didn’t have a specific actor in mind, per se, but I was disappointed because early in the casting, we did go out to some top actors who will remain nameless, who passed on the role. They all want to work with Ali. But some of them said, “I can’t play Trump. It’s too risky.” Or, “I don’t want to give my humanity to Trump, but Ali, I want to work with you on your next film.” In 2019, Sebastian read the script and was immediately intrigued by the role. And he and I had dinner in New York and talked about it, and he was obviously nervous about playing Trump, but he did something that is a miracle.
My fear was that this role would become just the two hour version of Saturday Night Live. And what Sebastian pulled off is, I can’t even explain how he did it, but it’s not an impersonation. As you said earlier, I felt like I was in the presence of Trump.
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