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00:00I'm really excited to talk to you about this film but I would like to start this off by reading a
00:03pretty scathing review that this got yesterday, if I may. A fake and classless movie called The
00:09Apprentice, in brackets. Do they even have the right to use that name without approval,
00:13closed brackets? It's a good question actually.
00:15It's a cheap, defamatory and politically disgusting hatchet job. Trump put it out on
00:19Truth Social. Why do you think Trump doesn't want people to see this film?
00:24The question is, doesn't he really want people to see this? Because then he wouldn't talk about it.
00:32This is Donald Trump from Mr. Cohn. Thank you so much.
00:35Donald who?
00:36We did a little sort of quick calculation and there are more people who have seen The
00:44Apprentice over this weekend alone than has been probably in his, you know, whole like rallies last
00:51month. Everywhere. I know it's about the crowd size, you know, that thing gets, you know,
00:58gets him agitated.
00:59Size matters for Trump.
01:00Size matters. No, but you know, like because everyone's talking about The Apprentice flopping,
01:06I mean like if we're flopping and we're getting like more people in than the whole
01:11like month-long Trump rally, then what does that say about Trump rally, you know?
01:15Maria, this isn't your first film that brushes with Donald Trump.
01:20Your Oscar nominated performance in Borat saw you in an infamous hotel room moment with Rudy
01:26Giuliani. How does it feel to you to be at the center of these politically charged moments and
01:31does it influence the roles that you choose?
01:33I just, you know, it's so strange but it just happened, again, it just happened organically.
01:38I just, I feel like I'm attracted to really challenging characters that are multi-layered
01:43and they-
01:44I'm so sure you're talking about Rudy right now, like characters that are multi-layered and happen
01:48organically.
01:49I'm talking, I'm talking, I'm talking about Tuta and Ivana Trump and yeah, both of the movies,
01:54I don't see any of them as political films, any of them, neither Borat nor The Apprentice,
02:00but at the same time they do have like an angle of dive into this American dream if you're a
02:07foreigner because Ivana is a foreigner, Tuta is a foreigner and like how people treat you as a
02:11foreigner. For me it's been about the girls, it's been about strong independent women, both Tuta
02:16and Ivana and women that can overcome a lot of difficulties.
02:20A hundred thousand, all right, go.
02:21Ivana, please, let's talk about this, come on, don't do this.
02:24Go find someone else, I'm not a traffic cop.
02:27There's a very visceral scene in the film that depicts Trump raping Ivana,
02:31I found it incredibly hard to watch. I just want to ask, how do you approach a scene like that?
02:36For me, the scene is important as a relationship scene between two people that I believe loved
02:42each other in the beginning. Maybe they had layers in their relationship as well because
02:47she wanted to marry somebody who is going to be a helpful provider, great husband,
02:52he wanted to be around somebody that is also strong, outspoken and that influenced him a lot.
02:57Yet at some point that relationship, that dynamic changes and we were watching this interview at
03:02Oprah that you can see that there's a bit of a tension between the two of them and it's been
03:07a navigating point of how things can shift towards somebody hurt you one way or another,
03:13like emotionally hurt you, physically hurt you.
03:16Women like her are going through situations like this, unfortunately, even right now.
03:20And they are survivors and if you have the opportunity to portray something like this,
03:26you should do it with respect and with depth.
03:30And of course, do as many conversations as possible.
03:34Have a great team behind you like stunt coordinators, intimacy coordinator,
03:38great partners like Sebastian, great leader like Ali.
03:40Yet at the same time, it's difficult. It's challenging to even imagine that for a scene,
03:45you have to go through something like this.
03:48Imagine that women are going through something like this in real life.
03:51The election is a month away, so you couldn't have picked a better release date for this film
03:55for promo. So what do you hope that people will take away from this film?
04:00And do you think it will actually change anyone's minds?
04:02It happened organically, like the timing happened organically. I don't know how.
04:06Was it a happy coincidence? Because obviously, you guys, there were so many challenges.
04:10Probably.
04:10This film.
04:11You could also see it as an unhappy coincidence because, you know, like it's a double edged sword,
04:17right? The same, you know, yeah, it's good with the awareness and promo, as you call it.
04:24But on the other hand, there's also like, OK, there's a Trump fatigue and people are like,
04:28OK, this is a really serious matter, which it is, you know, with the elections.
04:33We have a brand new campaign slogan. Let's make America great again.
04:39Oh, I like the again part.
04:40We were basically left with the options of releasing it later after the elections
04:47and risk losing at least some of the relevance, you know, although I don't think I don't think
04:55this is a Trump movie. So like if it came out a year later, it's not like, oh, no, no, it's
05:00whatever. We don't care anymore because he lost or whatever. I mean, are people really going to
05:05be affected by a movie they see? And who are who is that person that's going to be? I think as a
05:12filmmaker, I'm not naive or, you know, romantic about this. I don't think that we're going to
05:18change the world, you know, but if we can somehow get people to see that there are more ways of
05:26looking at the same thing. And in this case, I think that's sort of maybe what plays, you know,
05:33in our favour, which is this is someone people, everyone has an opinion about. And now we're
05:39coming and saying, hey, there's this also this way of looking at it, you know, so you have this sort
05:43of defamiliarising the familiar. Well, it's also not a political film, crucially, right? Because
05:49it's sort of it's a yes or no, you know, because it is a political movie in a way that it deals
05:55with the power structure. It looks at the power, the sort of the machine room of the power, a US
06:00politic legal system. But it's not party politics. It's not about who's Democrat, who's Republican,
06:07you know, you know, who's who's better at running the country or not, you know.