Sebastian Stan praises Oscars brave recognition of controversial Trump biopic, calls acting nod the American dream

Get the Full StoryWe finally know the nominees for the 97th Academy Awards, and it s already clear that this won t be a neat and tidy ceremony. Emilia P rez has emerged as the designated villain of this awards season, while frontrunner The Brutalist has come under speculation on account of certain AI revelations. Also in the mix are a pair of nominations for The Apprentice, Ali Abbasi s Donald Trump biopic that struggled to gain traction in the market for obvious reasons. Nevertheless, Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong who portrayed Trump and his early mentor Roy Cohn, respectively , both got teed up for Oscars glory yesterday, and Stan has since praised the Academy for shining a light on a film that, frankly, needs more light shone on it. Sebastian Stan reacts to his first #Oscars nomination:"I can t believe I m in Romania while receiving this news. It s surreal. I m stunned. I m speechless. I m humbled. I guess this is what they mean by the American Dream. I m so grateful to everyone who made the impossible, pic.twitter.com 1c5TTYqUa0 Film Updates FilmUpdates January 23, 2025 The actor, alongside co-star Strong, was one of many who expressed their deepest gratitude for the Academy s recognition, as per a roundup by Entertainment Weekly. Such recognition was no small fight, either, as the film s supremely hot-button subject matter meant that willing marketers were in short supply. it s that but also simple word of mouth. Sebastian and Jeremy managed to get nominations despite the movie s lack of distribution and without a big studio and marketing campaign behind it pic.twitter.com WN6aPKqWH1 Iivenrose January 23, 2025 Now, a film that empathizes with Donald Trump might sound like the world s largest alarm bell at the moment. As Strong put it in his own nomination reaction, Roy Cohn s long, dark shadow was hanging over the Capitol Rotunda on Monday and his legacy of aggression, misinformation and untruth is now a Kingdom Come. But make no mistake; it s precisely because of the human elements that the danger of Trump is so effectively dissected in this film. Regardless of how difficult this may be to hear, Trump is a human being, and because of that, we cannot truly distance ourselves from him no matter how much we want to. But, just as importantly, The Apprentice also makes a point to remind us that the emotional space occupied by Trump is a deeply, grotesquely unnatural one. This is a human being who was made to believe that he, essentially, was not. A human being who loved his brother but believed he wasn t allowed to. By absolutely no means does this excuse any of his behaviors or evils past and present, but The Apprentice isn t interested in doing that anyway. It is at once a thesis on what the world can become, what sort of world we miss out on, and what sort of world we can tragically perpetuate when we remove our humanity from the equation of life. We don t cry for Trump, nor do we cry for Cohn; we cry for the genuine human emotion that these two locked away, first in themselves and then in the lives they sought to influence control. And now one of them is President of the United States. And that s why Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong are two of the Academy s bravest recognitions. In what s become an endless sea of wholly justified but sardonic Trump takedowns, The Apprentice dared to indict him from a much more intimate angle that nobody be it Trump himself or his staunchest critics is comfortable observing. That alone speaks volumes on how crucial that angle is, and Stan and Strong s presence in the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories are robust endorsements of the art of sincerity; an art we can t afford to forget.

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