Sebastian Stan 'Couldn't Find' Someone to Do Variety's Actors on Actors Chat With Him After Donald Trump Role
Sebastian Stan's role as Donald Trump in biopic The Apprentice is costing him some opportunities.
During a Q&A at a screening of the film on Nov. 19, Stan said that though "some of the biggest" actors, directors, producers and writers who have seen The Apprentice have "raved about it," he "couldn't find" an actor to do Variety's Actors on Actors chat with him.
He alleged that it's because "they were too afraid to go and talk about this movie." With nobody stepping up, Stan lost his opportunity to participate in the magazine's interview series. However, Stan assured that "it doesn't matter" to him and he wasn't trying to "point a finger at anybody."
"That's when I think we lose the situation," he said, "because if it really becomes that fear or discomfort to talk about this, then we're really going to have a problem."
Stan then brought up Carlos Lozada's New York Times op-ed "Stop Pretending Trump Is Not Who We Are."
"I thought [the op-ed] was really interesting, which said that 'we have to stop pretending that Trump is not one of us.' And that's a really difficult thing to deal with at the moment, and I understand the emotions are very high, but I think that's the only way you're going to grasp this film," he explained.
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Variety's co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh also confirmed Stan's claims to PEOPLE and IndieWire. "What Sebastian said is accurate," he said. "We invited him to participate in 'Actors on Actors,' the biggest franchise of awards season, but other actors didn't want to pair with him because they didn't want to talk about Donald Trump."
After the clip from the Q&A went viral, actor Paul Walter Houser—who starred alongside Stan in I, Tonya—offered to do the Actors on Actors talk with Stan. "I'll do it?," he wrote in a tweet, receiving plenty of support from fans.
Variety has not shared whether there will be new plans for Stan to participate in the outlet's Actors on Actors series.
While some Hollywood celebrities are hesitant to be associated with the film because of Trump, the president-elect called out the movie on Truth Social last month, claiming it was an inaccurate telling of his life. "A FAKE and CLASSLESS Movie written about me, called, The Apprentice (Do they even have the right to use that name without approval?), will hopefully 'bomb.' It's a cheap, defamatory and politically disgusting hatchet job, put out right before the 2024 Presidential Election, to try and hurt the Greatest Political Movement in the History of our Country," he wrote.
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