Donald Trump’s biopic “The Apprentice” premieres at Cannes and causes a stir with a rape scene | Hollywood

Former US President Donald Trump is portrayed as a rapist who attacked his first wife Ivana in the new biopic “The Apprentice,” which premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Directed by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi, the drama fictionalizes a 1989 incident described during the couple’s divorce proceedings.

Near the end of “The Apprentice,” Trump reacts angrily after Ivana disparages his physical appearance. “You have a face like a damn orange,” she tells him.

“You get fat, you get ugly, and you get bald.”

It then shows how the future president pushes his wife to the ground and rapes her. “Have I found your G-spot?” he asks in the film.

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Donald vs. Ivana

This scene echoes Ivana Trump’s description in her 1990 divorce statement, in which she recounted a similar assault that occurred shortly after Trump’s scalp reduction surgery. She claimed Trump pushed her to the ground and pulled out a handful of her hair.

However, Ivana initially described the incident as rape but later retracted this claim. In a 1993 statement, she clarified: “At one point in 1989, Mr. Trump and I had a marital relationship in which he behaved toward me very differently than he had during our marriage. “As a woman, I felt violated…I have called rape, but I don’t want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”

During their divorce, Trump dismissed his wife’s version of the incident as “patently false.”

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The apprentice is looking for the Golden Palm

Written by bestselling non-fiction author Gabriel Sherman, The Apprentice stars Sebastian Stan as Donald J. Trump and Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump, Add’s Succession star Jeremy Strong plays notorious New York lawyer Roy Cohn. The film is a kind of dark neo-horror story in which Cohn is inextricably linked to Trump and embarks on a journey that exposes the ugly side of American capitalism. One of the most important rules Cohn tells Trump is: “Admit nothing, deny everything.”

The Apprentice is vying for Cannes’ prestigious Palme d’Or award. Although the production, supported by Canada, Denmark and Ireland, has been sold to numerous foreign territories, a US distribution deal has reportedly not yet been secured.

The film is also being challenged by lawyers linked to billionaire Trump donor Dan Snyder. According to Variety, Snyder invested in “The Apprentice” because he believed it would portray Trump in a positive light and was outraged when he saw a rough cut of the film.

Since the 1970s, at least 25 women have accused Trump of sexual assault, which he denied. Last year, the former president was found liable for the sexual abuse of writer E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s and ordered to pay $83.3 million in damages.

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The former POTUS was never charged or convicted of rape.

Ivana, the mother of Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric Trump, died in July 2022 after falling down the stairs in her Manhattan home. Her body is buried on the grounds of Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.