Did Donald Trump rape his wife Ivana? What is fact, fiction in the film “Apprentice”

Spoiler alert! The following story contains major details about the Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice” (now in theaters).

A few weeks before a thrilling American election, director Ali Abbasi throws a cinematic grenade into movie theaters.

“The Apprentice” is a polarizing biopic about a young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan), depicting him as a New York slum landlord who becomes a ruthless real estate mogul under the tutelage of closeted gay lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). The film is written by political journalist Gabriel Sherman, who covered Trump’s 2016 presidential election and uncovered the duo’s poisonous dynamic.

“People who have known Trump since the 1980s have told me that Donald uses both the techniques and the words that Cohn taught him,” Sherman says. “That’s really where the inspiration for the film came from, thinking about the ghost of Roy Cohn inhabiting Donald Trump’s body.”

The Trump campaign will take legal action against the filmmakers, Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, told Variety and Deadline. Cheung added that the film is “pure malicious slander” and “should not see the light of day.”

Here’s what the facts and fiction contain in the new film:

Did Donald Trump have a “homoerotic” relationship with Roy Cohn?

As the film shows, Trump and Cohn actually met in 1973 at a members-only club in Manhattan. They started talking, and Cohn agreed to represent the Trump family in a housing discrimination lawsuit. From there, Cohn took him under his wing and taught Trump his cutthroat ways.

“There was definitely a father-son dynamic in their relationship,” Sherman says. “On another level, there was a homoerotic subtext. One of the things I discovered during my research is that many of Roy’s lovers were blond, blue-eyed young men who bore a striking resemblance to young Donald. I think Roy was attracted to Trump, in a way, and this movie is sort of a love story. In the film, for example, “we see that Donald is getting married, which really breaks Roy’s heart.”

‘Apprentice’: Sebastian Stan became Trump by playing “Zoolander” and eating “a lot of sushi”

Was Donald Trump jealous of the success of his first wife, Ivana?

Trump met Czech model Ivana Zelníčková in New York in 1976 and they married the following year. The film shows her media savvy and how she became the face of several of the Trump Organization’s most important projects.

“They were definitely competitive; they were business partners,” Sherman says. “She was the manager of his casino in Atlantic City and played an important role in the business. And she became famous: New York magazine put her on the cover. This didn’t please Trump and so they became rivals.”

In another scene at home, Trump struggles to get baby Don Jr. to stop crying, joking that he’s “terrible with babies.” This is based on “an interview Trump gave in which he explained that he never changed a diaper and was not the type to get on the floor and play,” Sherman says. “It was by his own admission. He didn’t really bond with his young children until they were old enough to start working for his company.

Did Ivana Trump accuse Donald of raping her during their marriage?

In the film’s most upsetting scene, Donald tells Ivana that he’s no longer attracted to her, to which she responds that he’s fat and bald. Donald throws Ivana to the ground and climbs on top of her, sexually assaulting his wife as she screams at him to stop.

The alleged rape comes from a court deposition “that Ivana gave under oath during her divorce in 1990,” Sherman says. “In fact, the scene she described in the divorce papers was actually much more graphic and brutal than the one we dramatized in the film.” (Ivana later recanted her rape allegation in 2015, during her first presidential campaign; she died in 2022 at age 73.)

The scene sparked controversy, with Trump himself threatening the filmmakers with a cease and desist letter in an attempt to block the film’s release. But Sherman says he would have “threw himself on the tracks to keep that scene in the movie” given the numerous allegations of sexual misconduct against the ex-president, all of which he has denied.

“I couldn’t support a film that didn’t explore Trump’s misogyny,” Sherman says. “I needed the film to address that, and this scene is the most powerful and visceral way. Sexually assaulting someone you love is such a transgression. Spectacularly, it shows just how deep Donald Trump has sunk at this moment in history.”

Did Donald Trump really regret his brother’s death?

“Apprentice” depicts Trump falling into a deep depression after the sudden death of his older brother, Fred Jr., who was ostracized by his father and struggled with alcoholism. (He died of a heart attack in 1981 at age 42.) Trump’s hostility going forward was a “dramatic interpretation,” Sherman says, although the ex-president has said in interviews that he regretted not having done more to help his brother.

“Freddy’s death was a real blow to him,” Sherman says. “This is a moment in the storyline where Donald Trump really loses some of the last shreds of his humanity. He was never quite the same after that; he buries a lot of his emotions and pushes them away.

Did Donald Trump really betray Roy Cohn?

Cohn died in 1986 from complications of AIDS at the age of 59. Shortly before his death, Trump invited him to his Palm Beach, Florida, residence for a farewell dinner, where he gave Cohn fake diamond cufflinks.

“It’s all true,” Sherman said. “A lot of scenes in this movie seem so crazy that you think maybe a screenwriter made them up, but there’s actually a recording of them happening.”

As the film shows, Cohn truly showed remorse for framing Trump. “Wayne Barrett, a longtime investigative reporter for the Village Voice, quoted Roy saying how betrayed he felt,” Sherman said. “Trump distanced himself from Roy as he was dying of AIDS, and Wayne quoted Roy as saying, ‘I can’t believe he would do this to me.’ Donald pisses ice water. When I read that, it froze me; I knew I had the end of my film.

“If a brutal guy like Roy Cohn can feel betrayed by Trump, what does that say about Donald?”

Did Donald Trump really have liposuction and hair transplant?

In her divorce filing, Ivana claimed Donald went into “a fit of rage” over pain caused by a scalp reduction procedure in 1989. (“Also known as alopecia reduction , the operation aims to correct baldness,” reports Vanity Fair.) The alleged operation was performed by Dr. Steven Hoefflin, who Ivana also claims performed liposuction on Donald’s chin and waist, according to Vanity. Fair.

“Apprentice” shows the ex-Commander-in-Chief undergoing both procedures in the final moments of the film. “It’s a visual metaphor for Frankenstein’s monster: the last piece of the monster being made,” says Sherman. “But it’s also the first time in the entire film that Sebastian looks, acts and talks like a modern-day Donald Trump. Liposuction and hair transplants are the physical manifestation of the Trump we know today.”

If you are a survivor of sexual assault, RAINN offers support through the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE and online.rainn.org).

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ‘Apprentice’ Fact Check: What’s Real in Trump’s Explosive Film?