This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest, Sebastian Stan, is nominated for an Oscar for his starring

role as Donald Trump in the film The Apprentice. It begins in 1973 when Trump is 27, still working for

his father's real estate development company and trying to make a name for himself. The company is being

sued for discriminating against black people in its rental units.

Trump convinces his father to hire Roy Cohn as their attorney.

Cohn was infamous for being the chief counsel to Senator Joe McCarthy's Senate investigation

into suspected communists.

Cohn becomes Trump's mentor, teaching him how to admit nothing and deny everything,

go on the attack, and intimidate through the threat of lawsuits, or through actually filing

lawsuits.

Cohn is played by Jeremy Strong, who's also nominated for an Oscar.

Last month, Stan won a Golden Globe for his starring role in a different man, as a man who's

disfigured by a genetic condition that has grown fleshy tumors on his face. The tumors disappear

after taking a new drug, and he emerges quite attractive, but remains alienated and withdrawn

from other people. In the film I Tanya, Sebastian Stan played Tanya Harding's

boyfriend, who plots to disable her ice skating competitor Nancy Kerrigan. In the miniseries, Pam and

Tommy Lee, Motley Cruz drummer, and Pamela Anderson's husband. A lot of Stan's fans know him from

the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Bucky Barnes,

a recurring character in the Captain America films. Let's start with a scene from The Apprentice.

Trump is planning to build Trump Tower and is trying to convince New York City Mayor Ed Koch that

it will be so extraordinary, Koch should give him tax breaks. It will be so good for New York.

Roy Cohn is also in the room. You'll hear him jumping into the conversation.

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