Does “The Apprentice” tell the true story of Donald Trump? The most controversial scenes explained

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DOnald Trump is not happy about it The apprentice.

In May, the former president issued a cease-and-desist order against the unauthorized biopic, preventing it from being released in the United States.

In a statement about this The IndependentTrump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said: “We have filed a lawsuit to address the patently false claims made by these pseudo-filmmakers. This garbage is pure fiction that makes long-debunked lies sensational.”

Nevertheless, Iranian director Ali Abbasi's film has now secured an international release, hitting US cinemas on October 11 and arriving in the UK a week later.

The apprentice set in the early years of Trump's business career and stars Sebastian Stan as an aspiring real estate mogul Consequenceis Jeremy Strong as his mentor, the lawyer and politician Roy Cohn.

The film's producers described it as “inspired” by real events, although the Trump campaign claimed it was “pure fiction.” So how much of the story is actually true?

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Was Donald Trump mentored by Roy Cohn?

Roy Cohn was a Bronx-born and raised lawyer who rose to prominence in the 1950s for his role as senior counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy in his investigations of suspected communists. When Trump met him in 1973, Cohn was one of New York's most important political powerbrokers, and the young mogul was eager to learn everything he could from him.

In 2019 Where's my Roy Cohn? Documentary director Matthew Tyrnauer told NPR: “Donald Trump Is Roy Cohn. He fully adopted all of Cohn's teachings, which were: attack, always double down, accuse your accusers of what you are guilty of, and winning is everything. And Trump has learned those lessons and applied them to every aspect of his life and career.”

Did Donald Trump rape his first wife Ivana?

One of the most controversial sequences in The apprentice shows how Trump sexually abuses his first wife Ivana (played by Borat Subsequent Movie Filmis Maria Bakalova).

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In the scene, Ivana gives her husband a book about female orgasm. The couple argues, with Trump telling his wife he is no longer attracted to her. Then he throws her to the ground, pushes himself into her and sneers: “Is that your G-spot?” Did I find it?”

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Ivana Trump, who died in 2022, accused her then-husband of raping her in a 1989 divorce declaration.

However, when this claim was published in 1993 in the book by Harry Hurt III The Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. TrumpIvana denied the claim and said, “During a statement I gave in connection with my marriage case, I stated that my husband raped me. 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 hurt because the love and tenderness he usually showed me was missing. I have referred to this as ‘rape’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”

Did Donald Trump use amphetamines?

In The apprenticeTrump is portrayed as a man popping amphetamine pills. The former president has admitted to partying in lavish nightclubs such as New York's Studio 54 in the 1970s, but has repeatedly maintained that he does not use drugs or drink himself. He has attributed his abstinence totalism to the death of his alcoholic older brother, Fred Jr., who died in 1981 at the age of 43. At a press conference in 2018, Trump said: “I’m not a drinker. I can honestly say I have never had a beer in my life…. Whenever they’re looking for something good, I say, I’ve never had a glass of alcohol.”

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Earlier this year, Trump questioned podcast host Theo Von about the effects of cocaine, saying, “That's bad and dirty, right?” and asking if the drug was “stronger” and “too much to handle?”

Has Donald Trump undergone scalp reduction surgery?

Some critics have argued that the scenes in The apprentice What will make Trump most “angry” are the sequences in which he undergoes liposuction and scalp reduction surgery to reduce his bald spot. As with the sexual assault allegation, the source of this story is his first wife Ivana's divorce declaration. In 1990, she said under oath that Trump threw a tantrum after the painful surgery in 1989. The surgery, also known as alopecia reduction, is intended to combat baldness by cutting out the bald spot and stitching the remaining skin back together around it.

The procedure is known to cause headaches due to the tightness of the scalp. It was allegedly made by Ivana's own doctor, Dr. Steven Hoefflin, who also put Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Rivers under the knife. Ivana also claimed that Trump had liposuction on his chin and waist.

“The Apprentice” will be in cinemas in the US from October 11th and in the UK from October 18th