Sebastian Stan, who has been a big part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, will portray a young Donald Trump in the upcoming biopic titled The Apprentice.
The film will focus on a Trump before his days as the star of the NBC reality show and long before his political aspirations came to the forefront. The filmmakers call it “a dive into the underbelly of the American empire” and say it will chart Trump’s rise to power through his relationship with mentor Roy Cohn, the influential right-wing attorney who worked with Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare.
Jeremy Strong (from Succession) will portray Cohn, and Maria Bakalova (best known as Borat’s daughter in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm) will costar in the film as Ivana Trump.
The Apprentice will make its world debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May and compete in the film festival’s main competition. Ali Abbasi (The Last of Us) will direct. The Apprentice was written by Gabe Sherman, who wrote The Loudest Voice in the Room, a 2014 biography about Fox News Channel president Roger Ailes.
Stan is best known for his work as “Bucky” Barnes/The Winter Soldier in the Marvel films, but has also starred as Tommy Lee in the Hulu miniseries Pam & Tommy and appeared in Dumb Money last year.
The Apprentice will have some notable competition in the film festival. Among the other movies that will be screened for the Palme d’Or prize are Megalopolis, a 20-year passion project from Francis Ford Coppola starring Adam Driver and Giancarlo Esposito; David Cronenberg’s The Shouds; and Kinds of Kindness, which will bring together Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone, a pairing that resulted in a Best Actress win at the Oscars earlier this year.