Jeremy Strong has ignited Oscar chat with his performance in The Apprentice as Roy Cohn, Donald Trump’s mentor and lawyer during his hinterland as a property developer in Manhattan, but he’s revealed that every studio initially passed on the project. 

Strong told The Times of London that the film, co-starring Sebastian Stan as Trump, did not find US distribution for months. As we’ve previously reported, after The Apprentice premiered at Cannes, and the Trump campaign widely publicized a cease-and-desist letter that threatened legal action. It labeled the film a “libelous farce,” and “direct foreign interference in America’s elections,” because some financing came from Canada and Ireland. The whole thing was a bluff, but an effective one. Potential distributors ran for cover.

Strong told The Times: “I found it profoundly disturbing and a dark harbinger of things to come. Frankly, everyone in Hollywood passed on it because they were afraid of litigation or repercussions. I don’t think Hollywood has ever been a bastion of bravery, but that was disappointing.”

The film lays out Trump’s life in the 1970s, when he took over the family property business and began his empire-building under the tutelage of Cohn. 

Strong calls it a “Frankeinstein movie” saying: “They told us not to frame it like that, but let’s be honest. Cohn’s malign legacy is one of denial and that is what he passed on to Trump: this detestation of the world and a need to punish and act out with hatred.”