‘The Apprentice’ Director Defends Biopic That Shows Donald Trump Assaulting His Ex-Wife, Getting Cosmetic Surgeries: “I Don’t Necessarily Think This Is A Film He Would Dislike”

The Apprentice director Ali Abassi appeared unbothered at the Cannes Film Festival after Donald Trump‘s presidential campaign threatened to take legal action over the biopic.

“Everybody talks about him suing a lot of people — they don’t talk about his success rate though, you know?” he said at The Apprentice press conference Monday, per The Hollywood Reporter.

Abassi said he understood the assumptions Trump may make about the film without having seen it. “If I was him, I would be sitting in New Jersey, Florida or wherever he is now — or New York — and I would be thinking, ‘Oh, this crazy Iranian guy and some, like, liberal c***s in Cannes, they gathered and they did this movie and it’s fucked up,'” he said.

But he later offered to screen the film for Trump. “I don’t necessarily think that this is a movie he would dislike,” he said. “I don’t necessarily think he would like it. I think he would be surprised, you know? And like I’ve said before, I would offer to go and meet him wherever he wants and talk about the context of the movie, have a screening talk and a chat afterwards, if that’s interesting to anyone at the Trump campaign.��

The biopic stars Sebastian Stan as a young Trump in his early days when he came under the wing and mentorship of attorney and prosecutor Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong).

Variety reported that the “sharp and scathing” film was “full of unflattering sequences about Donald Trump,” including one scene that shows Trump raping his first wife, Ivana (Maria Bakalova). He is also depicted getting cosmetic surgeries and taking amphetamine pills. Ivana accused him of raping her in a 1989 divorce deposition, but she later retracted the claim in 2022, saying it “is totally without merit.”

The Trump campaign issued a statement threatening legal action.

“We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers,” campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement after the film’s Cannes premiere. “This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked.”

The statement continued, “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.”

Reports say that Dan Snyder, an investor on the film, has been fighting the film’s release and demanding a recut since it was screened in February. The billionaire reportedly helped fund the film because he believed it was going to be a flattering portrayal of the former U.S. president but was left “furious” after the screening.

Despite the controversy, the film received an eight-minute standing ovation after its premiere at Cannes.

The Apprentice is still seeking a U.S. distributor ahead of November’s presidential election. But it will have a theatrical release in the U.K. and Ireland later this year.