Ali Abbasi’s new Donald Trump origin story The Apprentice includes many specific details about the early days of Trump and his friendship with lawyer Roy Cohn. But did they all really happen? We fact-checked key moments in the movie below.
Spoilers about the film follow.
But First: The Apprentice Admits Some Fictionalizing
The Apprentice screenwriter Gabriel Sherman has acknowledged making up a scene in which Trump’s lawyer, Roy Cohn, blackmails a Department of Justice official with compromising photos.
“I’m not worried this scene would hurt the film’s credibility because the movie is art, not journalism,” Sherman told MovieMaker in an email. “The movie dramatizes the well-documented behavior and strategies Roy Cohn taught his apprentice, Donald Trump.”
But Trump’s campaign seized on the admission to argue that the film is “pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked.”
Trump Campaign communications director Steven Cheung told MovieMaker added that The Apprentice is “pure malicious defamation, should never 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.”
So, with that, on with our fact check.
Did Trump Give Roy Cohn Fake Cufflinks When He Was Dying?
In the movie, Trump gives a pair of cufflinks to Cohn while Cohn is on his death bed. The cufflinks are embossed with “Trump”, and the future president assures Cohn they were from Tiffany and contain real diamonds. But, in the movie, Cohn finds out from Trump’s ex-wife Ivana Trump that they’re actually knock-offs.
Director Ali Abbasi recently told MovieMaker that that scene was based on real evidence. “The fake cufflinks that Donald gives to Roy on his birthday, that is an actual — that happened,” the director said.
In a New York Times report, after Cohn’s death, Cohn’s ex-lover said that he believes the cufflinks were knock-offs and were neither real diamonds nor from Tiffany.
However, Abbasi could not confirm whether Cohn was aware of this when he was alive.
“I don’t know. But I’m also thinking these are very, very intelligent people. Roy, he’s no stranger to luxury. Now, in the movie, we wanted to dramatize it. The way it’s revealed is through Ivana. But I don’t think Roy necessarily needed Ivana to tell him what’s a fake diamond and what’s not,” Abbasi said. “This is a guy who has been living in luxury. So I can just imagine that it wouldn’t be very difficult for him to know.”
Did Trump Have Scalp Reduction Surgery?
The Apprentice also includes a scene of Trump going under the knife on an operating table, getting scalp reduction surgery in order to hide a bald spot on the back of his head.
This detail is likely derived from things Ivana Trump reportedly said under oath in 1990 during her divorce deposition when she and Trump split. She said that Trump got extremely angry due to the pain from a scalp reduction surgery, which she said was performed in 1989. The details of her deposition were included in the 1993 book The Lost Tycoon: Many Lives of Donald J. Trump by Harry Hurt III.
“Your f—ing doctor has ruined me!” Ivana says Trump said while he was recovering, according to the book.
However, Trump has denied that he had the scalp reduction surgery, so it’s hard to say for sure.
“Have I seen the medical records of where Mr. Trump was doing the procedure? No,” Abbasi said in the interview with MovieMaker. But he pointed to screenwriter and journalist Gabriel Sherman’s diligent fact-checking to support the veracity of the scene.
Did Trump Have Liposuction?
Ivana Trump’s aforementioned divorce deposition also included details of Trump’s liposuction procedure, according to Hurt’s book. The Apprentice depicted it as happening concurrently with the scalp reduction.
Ivana said both the liposuction and the scalp reduction were performed by her doctor, Dr. Steven Hoefflin. Her 1990 deposition described the liposuction as taking place on his chin and waist, according to Vanity Fair.
However, Trump has also denied ever getting liposuction.
The Apprentice Rape Scene
The movie also includes a divisive scene in which Trump is depicted raping Ivana during their marriage. Hurt’s book says that in Ivana’s 1990 deposition, which was given under oath with penalty of perjury, she described the experience as “rape.”
However, she later rescinded that accusation in a 2015 statement, according to the Daily Beast:
“During a deposition given by me in connection with my matrimonial case, I stated that my husband had raped me,” Ivana Trump said. “[O]n one occasion during 1989, Mr. Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently toward me than he had during our marriage. As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent. I referred to this as a ‘rape,’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”
Trump has denied ever raping Ivana. She died in 2022 at age 73.
Of the rape scene, Abbasi told MovieMaker: “Our source is Ivana’s own deposition under oath with fear of perjury and all that. I know it’s complicated, and I know she tried to deny that, but even then added that description in her memoir, she added a little disclaimer at the end of it. For me, it’s clear that it happened.”
Jeremy Strong, who played Roy Cohn in the movie, discussed the scene in an interview with The Times UK: “It is in historical record… It was given in a testimony under oath at risk of perjury. And then rolled back many years later, no longer under oath. So I guess let everybody else be the judge of the veracity of that.”
Roy Cohn Died of AIDS
The movie asserts that Cohn died of AIDS, although he denied it to his dying day, insisting it was liver cancer. However, according to his death certificate, his death was due to AIDS-related complications.
It’s true that Cohn did deny that he had AIDS, and he never publicly came out as a gay man. But according to Cohn’s obituary in The New York Times, Cohn’s death certificate listed his immediate cause of death as “cardio-pulmonary arrest” with two secondary causes of death were listed as “dementia” and “underlying HTLV-3 infections.”
HTLV-3 was later renamed to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
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Main image: Maria Bakalova and Sebastian Stan in The Apprentice. Briarcliff Entertainment