Lawyers for former President Trump have sent a cease-and-desist letter to filmmakers behind the new biopic “The Apprentice” after its debut at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this week, according to multiple reports Friday.
According to Variety, which first reported on the letter, Trump’s team is seeking to block release of “The Apprentice” and warns its producers not to seek a distributor for the movie, which stars “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” star Sebastian Stan as a younger Trump and “Succession” actor Jeremy Strong as famed attorney Roy Cohn.
“The Movie presents itself as a factual biography of Mr. Trump, yet nothing could be further from the truth,” reads the letter to director Ali Abbasi and screenwriter Gabriel Sherman, according to Deadline.
“It is a concoction of lies that repeatedly defames President Trump and constitutes direct foreign interference in America’s elections,” the letter reportedly said. “If you do not immediately cease and desist all distribution and marketing of this libelous farce, we will be forced to pursue all appropriate legal remedies.”
In a statement to Variety, the film’s producers called it “a fair and balanced portrait of the former president.”
“We want everyone to see it and then decide,” they said.
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung had previously threatened to sue over the movie, calling it “pure malicious defamation” and saying it “should not see the light of day, and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store, it belongs in a dumpster fire.”
“We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers,” Cheung said in a statement to The Hill. “This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked. As with the illegal Biden Trials, this is election interference by Hollywood elites, who know that President Trump will retake the White House and beat their candidate of choice because nothing they have done has worked.”
A representative for The Dhillon Law Group, who is behind the cease-and-desist letter according to Deadline, directed The Hill to a spokesperson for the Trump campaign.
The Hill has reached out to Trump’s lawyers and campaign and “The Apprentice” filmmakers for further comment.
The movie received an eight-minute standing ovation after it debuted at Cannes.
