Sebastian Stan remembers having panic attacks while preparing for her controversial role, which she reveals was almost played by a woman. The Romanian-American actor is best known for his role as Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sebastian Stan's stint in the MCU when Bucky Barnes began with Captain America: The First Avenger in 2011 and his most recent appearance was in the Disney+ miniseries The Falcon and the Winter Soldier in 2021. Stan is also set to star in the next MCU film Rays film, releasing in May 2025.
Outside the safe confines of the MCU, Stan has recently started branching out into some bold roles. In 2022, he played a charming cannibal in the film Fresh and starred as the Mötley Crüe drummer and subject of a sex tape scandal in the Hulu miniseries Pam and Tommywhich earned him an Emmy nomination. In 2024, Stan starred in A24's A different man as an actor with a disfiguring facial condition, and played a young Donald Trump in The Apprentice, with both performances earning him Golden Globe nominations.
Sebastian Stan had panic attacks because of his apprentice
The film was shrouded in controversy
Sebastian Stan remembers having panic attacks while preparing for his controversial role in The Apprenticewhich was almost played by a woman. Directed by Ali Abbasi with a screenplay written by Gabriel Sherman The film follows the early years of Donald Trump's career as a real estate entrepreneur in New York during the 1970s and 1980s, under the guidance of the equally controversial Roy Cohn. Sebastian Stan leads The Apprentice cast as Donald Trump alongside SuccessionJeremy Strong, Martin Donovan and Maria Bakalova.
During a recent appearance on The Hollywood ReporterThe annual actors roundtable alongside Daniel Craig, Paul Mescal, Colman Domingo and Adrien Brody, Sebastian Stan remembers having panic attacks while preparing for The Apprentice since “there was not enough time to gain weight and the prosthetic test failed badly.” The actor also revealed that two weeks before filming began, director Ali Abbasi told him that he was originally going to cast a woman to play Trump. Read Stan's full comments below:
I was having panic attacks every night. There was no time to gain weight and the prosthetic test failed badly, so I was fucked. And not only that, but the director, two weeks earlier, said, “Originally, I was going to cast a woman to play Trump.” … Why are you telling me this two weeks early?! I will die.
Production was even more problematic
Because of his occasionally unflattering and controversial portrayal of Donald Trump, The Apprentice was involved in numerous controversies from producer Dan Snyder pulling his support behind Trump's legal team in an attempt to block its release. In turn, the film struggled to find an American distributor, and despite an eventual limited release from Briarcliff Entertainment, the film struggled to reach its full financial potential, grossing just $12 million at the box office against its $16 million budget. million.
Additionally, there were also some struggles behind the scenes, as Sebastian Stan reveals, involving the constraints of the filming schedule and the failure of his prosthetics. Despite these struggles, Stan gave a surprisingly humanizing performance as Donald Trump in a film that offers a fair and balanced portrayal of the former and future president. Choose a woman, who Sebastian Stan reveals was a possibility, it would not have worked, as it would probably have resulted in a SNL-as parody.
Source: THR