Ali Abbasi doesn’t want to play down the physical transformation of his two male leads in – Marvel regular Sebastian Stan almost unrecognisable as a very recognisable Donald Trump, and s Jeremy Strong seeming to waste away before our eyes as lawyer and kingmaker Roy Cohn as he succumbs to AIDS. But he wants to call out something else, too. “That’s part of their job,” he says.
“Like, it’s an impressive part of their job, but it is part of the job nevertheless. Any good actor knows that in order to transform themselves into a character, they not only need to be mentally there, they need to be prepared and do research, but they also need to facilitate the physical transformation.” What makes his cast in special, he argues, is that they put that transformation at the service of a film that was almost guaranteed to earn them brickbats rather than bouquets.
“I think we were always going to be seen as either doing too much to humanise Trump or doing too little to humanise Trump, doing too much to explain or doing too little,” says Iranian-born, Denmark-based Abbasi. “This is not one of those cool drama parts where you get the Academy Award nomination. I mean, I hope it will be.
But I’m saying that is also part of the actors’ equation – that usually they choose things strategically. And I think these guys really cared about art, they really cared about the story, without caring so much about the aftermath and all the negativity they would have to deal with.
