Actor Sebastian Stan, who previously played a young Donald Trump during his ascendance in the late 70s and 80s in The Apprentice movie, holds the man now in the White House beneath contempt and aired his doom-laden views Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival.
Deadline reports Stan was at the elite movie festival in the south of France to talk about his latest movie Fjord but could not resist embracing the Hollywood habit of airing his political views when fronted by a media audience.
The Avengers star was asked how Trump has evolved since the premiere of The Apprentice two years ago. That picture world-premiered at Cannes ahead of Trump being elected for a second-time. The question drew laughs, Deadline noted.
“It’s not a laughing matter,” the Romanian-born American actor cautioned.
“I think we’re in a really, really bad place,” the 43-year-old continued before setting out his dim views of Trump and repeating unsupported conspiracy theories of being stifled last time around by Trump, saying:
To be honest when you’re looking at what’s happening, if you look at the consolidation of media, censorships, the threats, the supposed lawsuits that never end but don’t go anywhere, the writing was on the wall. We encountered that with the movie. We were unsure if the movie would play the festival. Maybe people are paying more attention to that film.
We went through all of that before Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert. Wish it wasn’t like that.
The Apprentice was a box office flop.
The 2024 biographical drama film, directed by Ali Abbasi and written by Gabriel Sherman, grossed $17 million worldwide on a $16 million budget.