Sebastian Stan is not quite finished unloading on former President Donald Trump.
The actor, who plays a young Trump in director Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice,” slammed the Republican presidential nominee in a Sunday conversation for The Hollywood Reporter’s “Awards Chatter” podcast, marking the latest Trump criticism issued by Stan amid the biopic’s release.
“There’s people that are going to say, ‘We don’t know what the truth is anymore.’ That’s the problem!” he said at Florida’s Miami Film Festival GEMS event, adding that Trump has “muddled it up so much.”
“You can create your own truth at this point, believe what you want, and that’s what people are doing,” he said.
Stan, a Romanian immigrant who moved to the U.S. at 12 years old, said that he was partially drawn to the film because, to him, it’s about the American dream.
“The movie was asking the question, ‘What is the cost?’” Stan said. “And this man [Trump] was sort of a really good example of what can happen as a result when you lose who you are because you are so focused on one thing and that nothing else matters, not even your humanity.”
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“The Apprentice” initially struggled to find distribution amid threatened legal action from Trump’s team. Briarcliff Entertainment ultimately picked up the film, which was then released theatrically in October to rave reviews (and a social media rant from Trump). The movie is now garnering Oscar buzz for Stan and co-star Jeremy Strong, who portrays late Trump fixer Roy Cohn.
Stan suggested Sunday that cinema might make more of a difference in shaping people’s views on Trump than, say, exhausting daily news reports about the Republican’s antics.
“It’s the experience of being with this person for two hours, and seeing where he’s coming from,” said Stan, “and really asking yourself at the end of this film, ‘Do you trust this person? Do you really trust that this guy is going to make a decision that’s going to be good for you or good for him?’”
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He added: “There is one paranoid, scared little man that’s still out there fighting the good fight to get into the membership club of Manhattan and be put on a plaque on a wall. He ain’t caring about your situation. It’s that he’s got to get there first.”
Read more on Stan at The Hollywood Reporter.