Donald Trump really doesn’t want you to see The Apprentice. Days after the Iranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi’s lurid retelling of Trump’s rise to power in the 70s and 80s premiered at Cannes, the former President’s lawyers submitted a cease-and-decease letter to the filmmakers. For months, it was unclear if The Apprentice could be released before the upcoming US presidential election – or be released at all. Now that it’s finally out in cinemas, Trump took to social media on Sunday – at 1am in his time zone – to declare that it’s a “fake and classless movie”, “a cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job”, and made by “human scum”.

Whatever a “fake” movie is, The Apprentice stars Sebastian Stan in slimy form as Trump and Jeremy Strong as his manipulative mentor, Roy Cohn, a lawyer who serves as a father figure with three mantras: “attack, attack, attack”, admit nothing, and claim victory regardless of the outcome. Starting out in grainy 16mm and ending with a garish VHS-style aesthetic, the period drama details the dangerous evolution of Trump’s shamelessness, his liposuction and hair transplant operations, and the rape of his wife, Ivana, played by Maria Bakalova. (Ivana claimed she was sexually assaulted by Trump in her 1990 divorce deposition, then in 1993 stated she didn’t want the word “rape” to be “interpreted in a literal or criminal sense”.)

Not only is The Apprentice controversial with Trump supporters, it might also prove challenging for anyone who’s not prepared for a film that attempts to understand Trump as a human being, or how compelling Stan and Strong are in their roles. (Yes, that means Trump and Cohn are humanised to some extent.) Unlike an SNL caricature, Stan’s Trump is a monstrously believable opportunist who adores, and then betrays, Cohn, a closet homosexual who later pretends his Aids is actually cancer. Intonating cold statements as if he’s possessed by an evil spirit, Strong is a far cry from Kendall in Succession, while Stan, who’s certainly a different man from A Different Man, exposes the character’s ugly, messy innards – literally, during the surgery scenes.

A few days before the UK cinema release of The Apprentice, I sat down in a London hotel room with Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong to discuss being called “human scum” by Trump, why they chose to humanise these political figures, and the film’s possible effect on the US election.

A few hours ago, Donald Trump posted on social media that you made a “fake and classless movie” and that you’re “human scum”. Is that the reaction you’d want from Trump? I imagine it’d be troubling if he was fully in support of your film.

Sebastian Stan: [deep sigh] Well, he’s making it more and more difficult to apply any logic or any hope of humanity to him at all. It’s very predictable. Other than the lack of repercussions for his words, I welcome his acknowledgement of the movie, and I see it certainly as a validation of how we’ve done our job in the right way. If he really didn’t feel anything was true in the film, then perhaps he wouldn’t feel so threatened by it.

Jeremy Strong: We didn’t make this film to skewer him or poke him or demonise him. The film is an attempt to understand him. I think it does a very responsible job of that. I find his post very troubling because of the language that he used. The phrase ‘human scum’ was used by Stalin, Hitler, Kim Jong, and Bolsonaro. It’s a phrase that has very heavy and upsetting historical connotations. It evokes things. I think he deliberately uses that phrase.

Roy Cohn said, ‘Hate is a powerful weapon. I bring out the worst in my enemies, and that’s how I get them to destroy themselves.’ I’m not surprised that Trump is spewing vitriol. I don’t think what the world or any of us need now is more of that. I’d like to sidestep that a bit, and not engage, and not take the bait or start name-calling. It’s what’s got us into such a giant mess. I think the movie’s an attempt to even humanise him.

So, yes, I’m happy that it’s coming out, and if his endorsement or disapproval or whatever that is, leads more people to go see it, then I do think it has something to offer the world right now.

Was there a fear of making Trump and Cohn too compelling and charismatic?

Sebastian Stan: Ted Bundy, who was, you could say, a psychopath, was really charismatic and extremely seductive. Even when he was in court defending himself, people were still in awe of him, and writing about him and how good he looked. It’s the same with the Night Stalker. They were sending him love letters while he was in prison, that he looked sexy and whatever.

You have to understand something: if you’re going to try to understand the root of evil, or the root of the lack of empathy, you can’t approach that from a one-dimensional place. You have to see all of its faces, and it comes in many, many forms. Here, there’s a real question about this brute strength that we project onto certain leaders, and these people that we’re discussing, that some are labelling as the great defenders of freedom in the free world, when their behaviour is anything but. Trying to almost censor a film – how is that any example of championing free speech? But it’s more complicated than that. You have to understand how they become the way they become.

Jeremy Strong: Your question presupposes a kind of intentionality: ‘I’m going to show this, I’m going to do a little more of that.’ Which, in my experience, is not actually the way it works. At least for me. I’m not setting out in any kind of deliberate way to show, you know, a little more purple, a little less yellow. It’s more holistic than that. You set out to have as much of an all-encompassing understanding as you possibly can – of the person, in this case, because they’re real people – and you try to absorb that, and commune with it, and internalise it in the deepest possible way, and try to understand them viscerally.

And then, at a certain point, it kind of takes over, and takes possession of you, and you walk onto the set, and anything happens. It’s not like I set out to make him likeable or not likeable, or sympathetic or not sympathetic. We are all of those things at different moments in our lives. Even the people who we consider and label evil – they’re not just like Snidely Whiplash walking around, twirling their moustache all the time. We’re interrogating them in a more dimensional way – or hoping to.

Sebastian Stan: That time before we shoot can be all kinds of things. I liken it to preparing for battle, and you’re arming yourself with things that you don’t know are going to be useful or not. You go in there, and try to forget about it, weirdly, and hope it’s all going to be there.

Jeremy Strong: Can I tell you something? I don’t think I’m in any headspace at all. It’s almost the opposite of a headspace. Cy Twombly, before he died, talked about painting as an active trance. That’s more what I experience that state to be. It’s empty of any intellectual thought.

It’s more physical?

Jeremy Strong: Not even physical but instinctive. You’ve done all the work. It’s inside of you somewhere. You show up and you’re unconscious, hopefully, if you’ve done it right.

Would you say the same, Sebastian?

Sebastian Stan: Yeah. I don’t think you show up there with an agenda, or that you find yourself thinking about it. You want to be available and surprised. There’s a partner. You’re in another reality. There’s a set. There are all kinds of things to respond to.

Jeremy Strong: I’ve heard Sebastian talk about it akin to learning an instrument, which I relate to. But I also think that first you have to build an instrument that’s never existed before, and then you have to learn to play it with fluency. You have to play it like you’re the first chair violinist. You know, playing music, you’re not thinking about the strings or the bow. You’ve done all that, and it’s taken years or however long it’s taken to be able to get to the starting point. That’s what you have to do to walk on a set.

It’s not like I set out to make him likeable or not likeable... We are all of those things at different moments in our lives. Even the people who we consider and label evil – they’re not just like Snidely Whiplash walking around, twirling their moustache all the time – Jeremy Strong

Ali Abbasi said he once considered casting a woman as Trump, and he even consulted Cate Blanchett about her portrayal of Bob Dylan in I’m Not There.

Sebastian Stan: He told me that about two weeks before we started shooting [laughs].

Jeremy Strong: Thanks, Ali [laughs].

Sebastian Stan: I know! It’s like, ‘Don’t do that.’

I imagine people told you not to do the movie. When that happens, does that make you want to do a role even more, to prove people wrong?

Sebastian Stan: Certainly for me it did. What does that say about me? This movie needed to happen, and it happened. I only believe that more and more when I look at the way we got here, and how many times it could have fallen apart or not have come out or not have happened. I’m glad that I stuck with it in the sense that I knew there was a reason for it.

Could you elaborate on why you say it needed to happen?

Sebastian Stan: What I’m saying is, there were so many factors that were constantly stopping the movie from happening. We lost financing three or four different times, and we didn’t make the movie. There was a strike. Suddenly a very specific window came to shoot the film. Then it was about trying to get it to Cannes Festival in a very short amount of time. We didn’t know we were going to get to Cannes, and then we got to Cannes.

Whilst in Cannes, you didn’t know if the movie was ever going to come out because people were trying to block it. Now it’s coming out. I’ve surrendered. It’s beyond us. It’s its own train. We’re on it.

I’m aware this film could have come out a few years ago, and the release date isn’t as strategic as it may seem. But now it is coming out in 2024, how important was it that it’s in cinemas just before the election? Is it a case where your enemy’s enemy is your friend, and in this case your enemy’s enemy is this film?

Jeremy Strong: I don’t think of this in terms of enemies. I’m no one’s enemy. No one is my enemy. If anything, I think the role of art is to build bridges, and to be a connective force in the world. That’s me personally. I do think that it coming out now is fortuitous, and it puts us right in the crosshairs of history. I think that the movie has something essential to offer anyone who cares about the state of the United States or the state of the world right now. The stakes are incalculably high.

Sebastian Stan: For me, to combat that very ‘who is my enemy?’ mentality, that validates the importance of this film. We all suffer from that. It’s a very cheap way to look at things. The point here is, again, to explore all these people from all angles, and to try to understand it.

Jeremy, you’ve spoken about Cohn as like playing a famously complex role like Iago in Othello. But is it the same when it’s a real person?

Jeremy Strong: I don’t think the approach changes for me. You’re kind of starting from scratch every time you do anything. But I’ve played a number of historical characters based on real people. That work always involves a certain amount of research, and observation, and studying a subject, and then trying to render it with accuracy and also bury the line.

I would say that Roy Cohn is probably the most fascinating person I’ve ever studied. There are moments where you feel like you’re looking into the heart of darkness, and there are moments I’m surprised by what I learn in terms of the cracks where the light comes in.

It’s also surprising to see how between Cohn and Trump there’s some form of love.

Jeremy Strong: It’s a love story.

It’s quite an unconventional love story. Did that relationship also have to be developed in an unconventional way?

Sebastian Stan: Nothing was conventional about this movie. I love that part of it. We got to really explore this relationship in so many ways. Ali was really helpful with that. Every take was different. There were many times when he wouldn’t ‘cut’, and we would just keep going. Things would come up, and we would live through them, and that would inform us further, even if they didn’t make it into the movie.

Lastly, have you ever auditioned for the same role?

Sebastian Stan: I don’t think so, but I’ve gone up for films he’s been in, definitely. Chicago 7. Is that the name? I would have been a lawyer.

Jeremy Strong: The part that Joe played?

Sebastian Stan: Yeah. The lawyer on the opposite side.

Jeremy Strong: A friend of mine said to me recently that we should be competitive with ourselves, and inspired by others. I’m very inspired by Sebastian and it was great to do this together. But listen, if we do go up against each other for something? I don’t know [laughs]. He could have it.

The Apprentice is out in UK cinemas on October 18