Young Donald Trump, Roy Cohn, and the Dark Arts of Power

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Obama, News, Wnyc, Washington, Barack, President, Lizza, Wickenden

4.2 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2024

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Actors and comedians have usually played Donald Trump as larger than life, almost as a cartoon. In the new film “The Apprentice,” Sebastian Stan doesn’t play for laughs. He stars as a very young Trump falling under the sway of Roy Cohn (played by Jeremy Strong)— the notorious, amoral lawyer and fixer. “Cohn took Donald Trump under his wing when Donald was a nobody from the outer boroughs,” the film’s writer and executive producer Gabriel Sherman tells David Remnick. He “taught him the dark arts of power brokering … [and] introduced him to New York society.” Sherman, a contributing editor to New York magazine, also chronicled Roger Ailes’s rise to power at Fox News in “The Loudest Voice in the Room.” Sherman insists, though, that the film is not anti-Trump—or not exactly. “The movie got cast into this political left-right schema, and it’s not that. It’s a humanist work of drama,” in which the protégé eventually betrays his mentor. It almost goes without saying that Donald Trump has threatened to sue the producers of the film, and the major Hollywood studios wouldn’t touch it. Sherman talks with Remnick about how the film, which opens October 11th, came to be.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to the political scene. I'm David Remnick. Early each week, we bring you a conversation from our episode of the New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:13.0	Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:20.0	I'm David Remnick.
0:22.0	Acters have been impersonating Donald the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick.
0:23.0	Actors have been impersonating Donald Trump since long before he went into politics.
0:28.1	Going back to the 80s on Saturday Night Live, Phil Hartman donned a wig and did Trump. And then came
0:34.4	Darrell Hammond, Jason Soudegus, Alec Baldwin, and now James Austin Johnson.
0:39.8	In the reality show The Apprentice, Trump played himself as a kind of boardroom cartoon and he made a fortune.
0:50.0	A new film, also called The Apprentice, goes in the opposite direction.
0:55.0	The actor Sebastian Stan doesn't play Trump for comedy.
0:59.0	This is a serious coming-of-age film in which the young Trump falls under the sway of Roy Cohen, an amoral
1:06.0	fixer who made his bones as an aid to the red-bating senator Joe McCarthy and now instructs
1:11.3	his young charge in the ruthless pursuit of power.
1:15.0	Well, in life there are two types of people.
1:20.0	There are killers and losers.
1:24.0	But it's good not to be a cure, no?
1:28.0	Killer means winner.
1:30.0	Oh.
1:32.0	So... Oh, so are you a killer, don't know?
1:37.0	After a very complicated path to completion, and we'll get to that, the apprentice will be released in October.
1:47.0	He was written and produced by the journalist Gabriel Sherman.
1:50.0	Sherman was the author of the loudest voice in the room about Roger Ailes, Fox News, and sexual harassment.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios and The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.