Sebastian Stan Recalls Early Reactions to ‘The Apprentice’: ‘You’re Never Going to Win Anything for This’

For a period of time after its Cannes premiere, there was a major lingering question regarding Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice”: Would anyone even be able to see the film outside of its festival run? And so the prospect of Oscar nominations for stars Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong? Unfathomable.

“We are deeply, deeply grateful to obviously have had this recognition. It was just hard afterward. You never knew. It was so uncertain. You couldn’t expect anything ever,” said Stan at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Virtuosos Awards, in reaction to the film overcoming legal actions by Donald Trump and allegedly one of his supporters who produced “The Apprentice,” and finally being released by Briarcliff Entertainment in October, shortly before the 2024 presidential election. “I had many people say, ‘Well, you’re never going to win anything for this.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, sometimes it’s not just about that.’ It just felt like it was important,” said the Best Actor nominee.

The film could not catch a break at the domestic box office either, making only $1.58 million its opening weekend despite being released in 1,740 theaters nationwide. “There’s mixed feelings about it. We went through an election while we were doing this, so there were so many feelings and there are still feelings. There’s not just one thing,” said Stan of the public response to the film.

However, he said he believes the film’s Oscar nominations will help audiences look at “The Apprentice” through a new lens. “Now the movie gets seen, more people can go in there. They can continue to look and try to understand. Because we have to understand. That’s the one thing,” said Stan. “This is not a situation where we can be indifferent or we can bury our heads in the sand and wait to wake up and then see what happens. It’s happening now and we’re living in a world where you’ve got billionaires that are telling you how to think and how to feel, and everyone’s screaming at each other if you’re thinking differently. And this is just about forming your own opinion and being able to have courage to say that. So that’s why I admire the movie.”

Elsewhere during his conversation at the SBIFF event, which also gave awards to Ariana Grande, Clarence Maclin, Fernanda Torres, John Magaro, Mikey Madison, Monica Barbaro, and Selena Gomez, Stan elicited laughs from the Arlington Theatre audience by explaining how he approached his take on the current president. 

“I worked with this amazing dialogue coach, Liz Himelstein, who was incredible. And we really were focusing on the consonants. It’s like even the lips had a purpose. They weren’t just there for no reason. It was forming around certain consonants where you are doing things, and then we were realizing that actually he doesn’t breathe, to be honest. That’s why it’s all in the throat. He doesn’t actually breathe into his body, which was interesting. Everything is really up here,” said the actor, gesturing toward his throat. 

“Then you look at his posture and you wonder why that is that way. I guess maybe his obsession with Clint Eastwood movies and where the stare down came from,” added Stan. “For a guy that wants to be taken as original, he’s really pretty good at stealing.”