Donald Trump is portrayed as a rapist who assaulted his first wife, Ivana, in the new biopic The Apprentice, which premiered in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival on Monday.
Directed by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi, the drama provides a fictionalized account of a 1989 incident that was detailed in the couple’s divorce proceedings.
The scene, which occurs near the end of The Apprentice, depicts Trump reacting with fury after Ivana disparages his physical appearance, calling him “fat,” “ugly,” and saying he has “a face like a fucking orange.” Trump is then shown forcing his wife to the floor and raping her, asking, “Did I find your G-spot?”
In her 1990 divorce deposition, Ivana Trump described a similar assault that occurred after her husband’s scalp-reduction surgery. She claimed that Trump pushed her to the floor and pulled out handfuls of her hair. Reported by The Guardian.
Although Ivana initially described the incident as rape, she later clarified in a 1993 statement that she felt violated but did not want her words interpreted in a “literal or criminal sense.”
During the divorce proceedings, Trump dismissed his wife’s account as “obviously false.”
Scripted by bestselling non-fiction author Gabriel Sherman, The Apprentice stars Romanian-born actor Sebastian Stan as Trump and Maria Bakalova as Ivana, with Succession star Jeremy Strong playing the ruthless New York lawyer Roy Cohn.
The film portrays Cohn teaching Trump the dark tactics of American business, emphasizing the mantra: “Admit nothing, deny everything.”
The Apprentice is competing for the Palme d’Or at Cannes. While the film has been sold to several foreign territories, it reportedly has not secured a US distribution deal and is facing a legal challenge from lawyers connected to billionaire Trump donor Dan Snyder.
According to Variety, Snyder invested in The Apprentice expecting it to depict Trump positively and was reportedly outraged after viewing a rough cut of the film.
Since the 1970s, at least 25 women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, all of which he has denied. Last year, the former president was found liable for the sexual abuse of writer E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s and ordered to pay $83.3 million in damages. He has never been charged with or convicted of rape.
Ivana Trump, the mother of Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric Trump, died in July 2022 after falling down the stairs at her Manhattan home. Her body is buried at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
