Sebastian Stan
Appearances
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
For the beginning and the end of the scenes, which weren't there, you know, we had a lot of the middle of the bulk of what we needed, right? That was written, but there were many times where we needed to kind of like find out about what surrounded it. And, you know, that was part of what I did to prepare many times the night before with this scene and other scenes where...
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
I would very kind of surgically construct an improvisation in his way of speaking that I would get from various interviews that I'd collected over time and things that he had said to Barbara Walters and Larry King and many things that he had said to Ed Koch and all kinds of footage that I'd placed together.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
Well, that's a really great question, and it's one where there's no real clear answer that I can give you. It's a mixed bag. It's a mixed bag. I mean, in a lot of ways, a lot of things look very predictable to me, especially having studied him for this film. The victimhood, blaming, the revenge tactics, all that we go in-depth in the film that he had...
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
absorbed from Roy Cohn, you really do see, I think even if you look at the inauguration, I mean, and even at the debate, right, with Kamala Harris, I mean, you really see what we talk about in the movie of these sort of ways he's learned to flip it around on the other person and kind of just always just be denying reality and reshaping the truth as long as it fits his narrative.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
And the complete, utter lack of Lack of acceptance for any criticism or any wrongdoing or anything whatsoever. So it's eerily familiar. It's predictable. It's...
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
Also, I may say tragic because I guess for me, you know, I also feel like I saw a version of this overweight kid that was paranoid and insecure and desperate for attention that was made to pay a big price at daddy's big betrayal, sending him off to military school where he had to kind of
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
you know, whatever happened there that dehumanized him further and the revenge that he's been enacting out, you know. And at the same time, it's hard not to sort of find some of it upsetting as well because I do feel so much of it is rage and anger that's been suppressed and undealt with that we're all having to kind of just, you know, deal with and pay a price for.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
Well, I think as an actor, you have to kind of go through a process where you look at what are the things here that I feel that are useful for me to do this in the right way that it's asking of me. And what are the things that I feel that are going to work against me? And then you have to sort of become an investigator. And you have to, in a way, be a bodyguard to the character you're playing.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
And I've wrestled with a degree of powerlessness as a child that I felt growing up as a result of A lot of change that happened very quickly in formative years where I didn't feel safe and changing countries and changing schools and changing homes and caretakers coming and going and so on. And that's affected my life in a certain way.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
But I would argue nowhere near the degree of powerlessness that I feel today. He must have gone through in order to create such an ulterior ego to the extent that he has because that's what I really see it's about with him. It's always power and mistrust and paranoia and everything is transactional. That's how he operates.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
68 stories tall, 28 sides, a million square feet. Every unit will have amenities like you wouldn't believe, and the high floors have exceptional views over Central Park. The lobby, the floors will all be marble, pink Paradiso marble from Italy.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
It will have the largest atrium in the world, a 60-foot waterfall spanned by shops and retail and restaurants, and I think it's gonna be something very special.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
You're not, Mr. Mayor, because I'm building a 68-story building that's going to employ 5,000 construction workers.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
And you're being a very unfair guy. Because, frankly, what do you know about me? What do you know about the amount of money that I made on my own? You don't know anything, to be perfectly honest, Mr. Mayor. You don't know me at all. But you will. You'll never forget me after this, because I won't forget what you just did.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
Well, I mean, I would say that Trump did not sound like Trump when he was in his mid to late 30s, which is when that was sort of happening. And I think that I did make some conscious choices very carefully with the voice, not only just to honor the age and what he sounded like at the time, which to me sounded very different than today, but also...
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
to not lean into it as much as it's become popular to do. Um, because a big challenge with this role, um, was obviously to avoid falling into caricature and into sort of the version, um, of a cartoon that he's somewhat become. Um, one would argue even willingly on his own part. whether he's aware of that or not.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
Because the voice along with mannerisms and other physical characteristics that he has that we've become so
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
accustomed to and we've been so oversaturated with, really had to be kind of very, I had to very carefully select and maneuver them and kind of earn them over the period of time of the movie, very much like he did as he grew into what we see today, but in part because I needed to bring audience in on this journey as opposed to alienating them from the beginning with what they've already sort of know and expect.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
That whole clip actually was improvised, yes. The scene in the script, as it was written, it started out with, you know, it just said, Donald finishes introducing Trump Tower, and he sits down and he goes, well, what do you think, Mr. Mayor? And he goes, oh, very fascinating, what do you call it?
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
But in the manner that we had been shooting, by the time we got to the scene, I was already prepared to... sort of have something ready because our director was always encouraging. And really, the script was asking for this. You know, it was always asking for...