When director Ali Abbasi began work on his Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice,” he knew what he didn’t want to do. “He’s the kind of character where if you get too close to reality, it can become a caricature,” Abbasi told IndieWire. “It’s almost like trying to make a movie about Jesus Christ or Hitler. They’re icons whose faces have almost become visual patterns. People’s brains start picking up on that visual pattern and if it’s too close, they can’t accept the person as a human being.”
Casting Sebastian Stan went a long way toward assuaging Abbasi’s concerns; in keeping with his ability to radically transform into a wide variety of characters, Stan fully disappears into the role of Donald Trump, aided by some top-notch hair, make-up, and prosthetics. According to hair department head Michelle Côté, the main concern was always to make Stan forget about these external accessories. “I don’t want the actor to feel conscious of what they’re wearing,” she said. “It needs to feel like it’s growing from their head.”
In the case of “The Apprentice,” Côté was tasked with creating hair for a character whose real-life source is known for his, to put it mildly, unusual coiffure. Rather than go too far in a direction that would distract from the performance, she zeroed in on a few key looks to subtly modify from scene to scene. “There were three phases,” Côté said. “There’s a younger look that’s more freestyle, longer and thicker with less hairspray. The second phase comes after Donald’s wedding, and that wig is slicker, tighter, shorter…a little neat, with a bald part where we can see the skin.”
For the third and final phase, Côté created a wig that was fuller with a more exaggerated front, closer to the Trump that became ubiquitous in the media of the late 1980s. All of the looks were based on archival research, as Côté referenced the many historical images of Trump that were available online and then closely collaborated with the make-up and prosthetics departments to finalize Stan’s looks. “Sebastian always had the last word,” she added, noting that he would often add the final spray of product to get the hair where he wanted it in any given scene.
“That’s where you see the artistry of actors,” Abbasi said. “There are all these tools like the hair and makeup and prosthetics and costumes, but doing a real character is almost like watching an exorcism. The devil is in there and it comes out — you don’t know exactly how it got in, but it’s working.”