When, in 2016, business tycoon and reality TV star Donald Trump was elected US president for the first time, the reaction in Hollywood was swift and unified. Celebrities both big and small rushed to condemn the Trump presidency; it was an industry-wide barrage of outrage and opprobrium that swelled throughout his four turbulent years in office. Those on the other side of the aisle, meanwhile, were largely anomalies – oddballs and has-beens and one-man scandal machine Kanye West. Supporting Trump might not have quite been career suicide, but to endorse him was to make yourself an outsider in an industry monopolised by liberals, albeit wealthy ones.
Now it’s four years since Trump left office, and as the US readies itself for the return of the polarising populist leader, it feels as though the vibe has somewhat shifted. After the election, the Motion Picture Association, a group representing the five major American studios (plus Netflix, MGM and Prime Video), issued a surprisingly chipper statement about “look[ing] forward to working with [the Trump administration]”. A few days later, yet more eyebrows were raised after a revelation by Sebastian Stan, who portrayed Trump in the recent film The Apprentice. The movie, which also stars Succession’s Jeremy Strong, depicts a small chunk of Trump’s life, including the alleged rape of his then wife Ivana. Stan said that he had been invited onto Variety’s prestigious Actors on Actors series – a yearly run of interviews in which actors vying for awards sit down and speak to each other – but had ultimately been unable to, due to other actors’ publicists refusing to let their clients talk about Trump. “I couldn’t find another actor to do it with me, because they were too afraid to go and talk about this movie,” he said, with Variety’s editor confirming this to be the case.
