The Academy Awards are this Sunday. We hear from the two stars of the film The Apprentice, Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong. It's about how a young Donald Trump was influenced by the infamous, unscrupulous lawyer Roy Cohn. Also, we hear from Adrien Brody, who is nominated for his starring role in the film The Brutalist, in which he plays a Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor who seeks a fresh start in post-WWII America.John Powers reviews the animated film Flow, which has been nominated for both best animated feature and best international film.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. The Academy Awards are Sunday. Today, we feature interviews with three nominees. First, actor Jeremy Strong. He's probably best known for his role in the HBO series Succession, playing the troubled character of Kendall Roy.
In the film The Apprentice, Strong is nominated for his role as the unscrupulous lawyer Roy Cohn, who mentored a young Donald Trump as he was establishing himself in his father's real estate business. In the 1950s, Cohn was infamous for being the chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy's Senate investigation into suspected communists.
Cohn and McCarthy also were leaders in the anti-gay movement that led to an executive order banning gay people from serving in government. But Cohn was a closeted gay man who died of AIDS. He never came out and insisted that his disease wasn't AIDS but was liver cancer. Strong's performance personifies what was written about Cohn on his patch on the AIDS memorial quilt, bully, coward, victim.
Terry spoke with Jeremy Strong last October. Let's begin with a scene from early in the film, when Trump and Cohn first meet. Trump has just gotten accepted to a private dining club in Manhattan. Cohn is seated at a table with several mobsters, including Fat Tony Salerno, the boss of the Genovese crime family.
When Cohn notices Trump, whom he's never seen before, he asks his friend to bring Trump to the table. Cohn is interested in finding out who Trump is. Trump is played by Sebastian Stan. Jeremy Strong, as Cohn, speaks first.
What is your business, Donald? Real estate. I'm vice president of a Trump organization. Oh, you're Fred Trump's kid? That's right. He's Fred Trump's kid. It sounds like your father is a little tangled up. It looks like he could use a good motor.
But tell us about it. Right now, the government and the NAACP are suing us. They're saying our apartments are segregated. This is America. You can rent to whoever the hell you damn want. But our lawyer wants us to pay a huge fine to settle, and we can't. It's going to bankrupt us and ruin the company.
Did you tell the feds to f*** themselves?
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