Sebastian Stan Shares How Warnings About Playing Donald Trump Fueled His Motivation: ‘Weirdly Motivating’.Linh

Sebastian Stan received warnings before portraying Donald Trump on the big screen, but that didn’t deter the actor from pursuing the role.

The actor portrays an ’80s-era Trump in the new film The Apprentice, alongside Maria Bakalova as first-wife Ivana and Jeremy Strong as the future president’s mentor, lawyer Roy Cohn.

Stan, 42, told Entertainment Weekly that people tried to convince him not to sign on to play the controversial figure.

“I had people tell me not to do it. I had people tell me I don’t look like him. I had people tell me that it’s not safe for me to do it. I had people say that I shouldn’t try to alienate half the country,” said the actor, known for his Marvel role as Bucky Barnes, a.k.a the Winter Soldier.

He found the warnings and fear surrounding the part “weirdly motivating.” Gabriel Sherman, who wrote the film, told EW several actors passed on playing Trump because they were “too scared.”

Stan and his costar, Succession‘s Strong, 45, say the movie isn’t meant to “vilify” Trump, 78, who is currently running for president again, up against Vice President Kamala Harris.

“This is a movie about two human beings, not about two villains or monsters. I don’t think the movie attempts to vilify these people. I think it attempts to understand where they came from and how they became who they are,” said Strong.

Stan added, “In some ways, it’s sort of a love story. One of my favorite things was what [Jeremy] said at the very beginning, which was, ‘I’m playing a guy named Roy, and you’re playing a guy named Donald.’ “

After The Apprentice premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, Steven Cheung, a communications director on the Trump campaign, spoke out against the movie and threatened legal action over “blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers.”

“This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked,” Cheung added in the statement at the time. “This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should not see the light of day, and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store. It belongs in a dumpster fire.”

Other actors who have memorably portrayed Trump onscreen include Alec Baldwin for Saturday Night Live and Brendan Gleeson on The Comey Rule.

The Apprentice is in theaters Oct. 11.