In a new cover story from VARIETY, actor Sebastian Stan speaks with Chief Correspondent Daniel DโAddario about portraying Donald Trump in The Apprentice. Stan also discusses the filmโs divisiveness in Hollywood, A Different Man, his time on Gossip Girl, Marvelโs contributions to Hollywood, and more.

Stan on preparing to play Trump:
โI had 130 videos on his physicality on my phone. And 562 videos that I had pulled with pictures from different time periodsโfrom the โ70s all the way to todayโso I could pull out his speech patterns and try to improvise like him. [Director Ali Abbasi] could come in on the second take and say, โWhy donโt you talk a little bit about the taxes and how you donโt want to pay?โ So I had to know what charities they were going to in 1983. Every night I would go home and try not only to prepare for the day that was coming, but also to prepare for where Ali was going to take thisโฆI started to realize that I needed to start speaking with my lips in a different way. A lot of that came from the consonants. If Iโm talking, Iโm moving forward. The consonants naturally forced your lips forward.โ

On The Apprenticeโs divisiveness in Hollywood:
โThe Apprenticeโ didnโt sell for months after Cannes partly because Trumpโs legal team sent a cease-and-desist letter attempting to block the filmโs release in the U.S. while the fest was still ongoing. Entertainment corporations from Netflix to Disney would be severely inconvenienced if the next president came into office with a grudge against them. The film was finally sold to Briarcliff Entertainment, a distributor so small that the production has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money so that it will be able to stay in theaters. Stan chalks up the filmโs divisiveness to a siloed online environment.
โEverything with this film has been one day at a time. There are a lot of people who love reading the [filmโs] Wikipedia page and throwing out their opinions. But they donโt actually know what theyโre talking about. Thatโs a popular sport now online, apparently.โ
Unprompted, Stan brings up the idea that Trump is so widely known that some might think a biographical film about him serves no purpose.
โWhen someone says, โWhy do we need this movie? We know all this,โ Iโll say, โMaybe you do, but you havenโt experienced it. The experience of those two hours is visceral. Itโs something you can hopefully feelโif you still have feelings.โโ

On walking around New York City with the prosthetics for A Different Man:
In โA Different Man,โ Stan plays a man afflicted with a disfiguring tumor disorder, which required his face to be hidden behind extensive prosthetics. The days were particularly long because prosthetics artist Michael Marino was only able to apply Stanโs makeup in the early morning.
โEven though I wasnโt shooting until 11 a.m., I would go at like 5 in the morning to his studio, or his apartment,โ Stan recalls. The hidden advantage was that Stan had hours to kill while made up like his character, the kind of person the world looks past. โI wanted to walk around the city and see what happened. On Broadway, one of the busiest streets in New York, no oneโs looking at me. Itโs as if Iโm not even there.โ The other reaction was worse: โSomebody would immediately stop and very blatantly hit their friend, point, take a picture.โ
On his Gossip Girl days:
โIt was the first time I was in serious love with somebody,โ he says. (He dated the seriesโ star, Leighton Meester, from 2008 to 2010.) โWalking around the city, seeing these same buildings and streetsโlife seemed simpler.โ

On Marvelโs contributions to Hollywood:
โItโs become really convenient to pick on [Marvel films]. And thatโs fine. Everyoneโs got an opinion. But theyโre a big part of what contributes to this business and allows us to have smaller movies as well. This is an artery traveling through the system of this entire machinery thatโs Hollywood. It feeds in so many more ways than people acknowledge. Sometimes I get protective of it because the intention is really fucking good. Itโs just fucking hard to make a good movie over and over againโฆIn the last couple of years. Iโve gotten much more aggressive about pursuing things that I want, and Iโm constantly looking for different ways of challenging myself.โ
Read the full Sebastian Stan Variety interview here.