Shortly after Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, rumors began circulating that Jeremy Strong's performance as Roy Cohn could have real Oscars potential.
Starring MCU's Sebastian Stan as the former US President and Succession's Jeremy Strong as the mysterious US lawyer who helped Trump rise to power, The Apprentice has been one of the most highly anticipated Cannes releases this year.
Jeremy Strong Plays the Man Who Shaped Trump
Directed by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi, The Apprentice tells the fictionalized story of former US President Donald Trump's real estate career in the 1970s and 1980s.
Jeremy Strong, best known for his long-running role as Kendall Roy in the critically-lauded drama Succession, depicts Roy Cohn, a much more cunning mentor than the likes of Kendall in the HBO series.
Cohn is portrayed to as a cutthroat attorney who would stop at nothing to win a case. Both in The Apprentice and in real life, he was by Trump's side starting in 1973, when he began tutoring the young businessman in matters both legal and less so. In one piece of footage dating back to the late 1970s, Cohn seemingly predicted the former president's meteoric rise to power and influence with almost spooky accuracy.
Back in 2016, Trump's former mentor was described in a Washington Post headline as the "man who showed Donald Trump how to exploit power and instil fear," which, according to the article, was a lesson best summed up in three actions: "attack, counterattack and never apologize."
It's no wonder Strong should stand out in a role such as Cohn's, and in a biopic as hotly-anticipated and as controversial as The Acolyte. Any potential Oscars nominations would just be the cherry on top.
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Reviewers Whisper Strong in The Apprentice Has "Oscars Potential"
The Apprentice received an eight-minute standing ovation from the Cannes audience, followed by rave reviews suggesting the Succession star, along with the film itself, could be in the running for the next Oscars.
Deadline describes the film as "smart, sharp, and surprising" thanks to the "devilish origin story" focussed around Roy Cohn.
Meanwhile, The Guardian praises Strong's depiction, writing that his "strange physical stillness and lizardly stare" are "much more interesting and effectively threatening" than Sebastian Stan's "moderate hair-and-makeup performance" as Trump.
As The Daily Beast notes, the Succession star, who by all accounts is on his way to earning a Tony for his Broadway role in An Enemy of the People, also feels like "one of the first performances of this year's Cannes that has true Oscar potential."
If the critics can't ignore the rising star's time to collect on an Oscar-level act, fans all but lost their heads praising Strong:
The Apprentice Director Wants to Make Movies "Political Again"
Considering the rise of political movies with Oscar potential, The Apprentice is right in the headlines after Oppenheimer. The Nolan-helmed film won seven Academy Awards out of its thirteen nominations in March 2024.
Even The Apprentice director Ali Abbasi hopes "it's time to make movies relevant" and "political again."
Abbasi shared in his speech at Cannes how he was initially discouraged from creating the Donald Trump biopic.
He told the audience he was almost talked into telling the story in a "nicer" or more "metaphorical" way than what The Apprentice ended up being.
"The point is there is no 'nice', 'metaphorical way' to deal with the rising wave of fascism," Abbasi said, earning applause from the audience, "There is only the messy way, the banal way, the way of dealing with this wave on its own terms, at its own level."
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