Tuesday, May 21, 2024
Year : 2, Issue : 21
Entertainment Desk: In the new biopic “The Apprentice”, which premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, former US president Donald Trump is depicted as a rapist who assaulted his first wife, Ivana.
Directed by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi, the drama fictionalizes a 1989 incident that came to light during the couple’s divorce proceedings.
Near the end of “The Apprentice”, Trump becomes enraged after Ivana insults his appearance, saying, “You have a face like an orange. You’re getting fat, you’re getting ugly, and you’re getting bald.” The future president is then shown forcing his wife to the floor and assaulting her.
This scene reflects Ivana Trump’s account from her 1990 divorce deposition, where she described a similar assault happening soon after Trump’s scalp-reduction surgery.
Scripted by bestselling author Gabriel Sherman, “The Apprentice” stars Sebastian Stan as Donald J Trump and Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump, with “Succession” star Jeremy Strong portraying the notorious New York lawyer Roy Cohn.
The film is also facing legal challenges from lawyers associated with billionaire and Trump donor Dan Snyder.
In a ruling last year, he was held responsible for sexually assaulting writer E Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s and was instructed to pay $83.3 million in damages.The former president of the United States has never faced charges or been convicted of rape.