00:00What did you learn about each other through this experience?
00:03Nothing at all.
00:16In fact, I did a play last year, and when Sebastian came to see it,
00:21I felt like I was meeting him really for the first time.
00:24The circumstances, the timing of the shoot and everything
00:27just didn't allow for anything outside of it,
00:30and I think, in a way, that was really beneficial.
00:34Roy Cohn, nice to meet you.
00:35You're Roy Cohn from all the papers?
00:37Yeah, you're brutal.
00:38Guilty as charged.
00:40The feeling of sort of having our feet to the fire
00:43was definitely part of this,
00:44which just made us, I think, work harder
00:46and take the responsibility.
00:49You can't go into this without, at least in my case,
00:51thinking that everyone and their cousin and their dentist
00:54and their neighbor is going to have an opinion
00:56about this particular person,
00:58but at some point, you just have to not really care about that.
01:03It didn't enter into my mind all that much,
01:06except that I knew that we would be
01:09sort of touching the third rail in making this movie,
01:13but in a way, that's a goal.
01:15The goal is to make work that touches the third rail.
01:18What felt at stake here was important enough,
01:23and the chance to work with Jeremy and Ali exceeded that,
01:28and so that overpowered everything else for me, I think.
01:31Gabe Sherman, who wrote it, is a very well-regarded journalist,
01:35and he researched this exhaustively and meticulously,
01:39so the level of journalistic and historical veracity
01:42is really there, and then Ali brings a kind of punk rock,
01:47David Lynch ride to it.
01:49How do you always win?
01:50There's rules.
01:52The first rule is attack, attack, attack.
01:56Rule two, admit nothing, deny everything.
01:59Rule three, no matter what happens,
02:01you claim victory and never admit defeat.
02:04Obviously, we were trying to find the right balance of prosthetics.
02:08I think we were both kind of wanting less-is-more approach on this.
02:12The essence was more important than the likeness.
02:14These are such familiar people.
02:17It has to go beyond just something memetic.
02:21You can't just be doing an imitation.
02:23This film is taking these two individuals seriously,
02:26but it's a painting, not a photograph.
02:28One of my favorite things was what you said,
02:31actually, at the very beginning,
02:32which was, I'm playing a guy named Roy,
02:35and you're playing a guy named Donald.
02:36It's a relationship.
02:38It's Faustian and Shakespearean in ways.
02:41In some ways, it's sort of a love story.
02:44There's a mentorship to it.
02:45This is not a political movie.
02:48It's a movie about the relationship between these two outsiders
02:51who became the ultimate insiders,
02:54using Roy Cohn's playbook of always attack,
02:59deny everything, and never admit defeat.
03:02He's one of the most influential figures in the 20th century,
03:05it turns out, is sort of long shadow being cast to where we are today
03:10in the darkness today.
03:12I record everything in case I need it.
03:24Well, that's illegal.
03:24You have to be willing to do anything to anyone to win.
03:28It was very exciting to have a, you know,
03:31to just kind of be in the ring with each other
03:34and know that whatever we were going to throw at each other,
03:39the other would punch back above their weight.
03:41You've got to work on that.
03:42Your face looked like an orange.
03:43Maria was lovely.
03:44I mean, very committed, very open, I think,
03:47to sort of the way we were shooting.
03:50And obviously, she's from that part of the world, Eastern Europe.
03:54And I think there's a lot of authenticity and familiarity
03:58that she had with Ivana
03:59that sort of maybe somebody else wouldn't have.
04:02And Roy Cohn was someone who believed
04:05that law was an adversarial profession.
04:08He was a pretty aggressive person.
04:10And he also believed in what he called owning the surprise,
04:14as I do as an actor.
04:15So I would pounce on her in scenes,
04:18and she was fantastic to work with.
04:20Honestly, for me, the joy of going to set
04:25is just not knowing what was going to happen,
04:27even take to take.
04:28I feel like every day was pretty difficult.
04:31Locations and timing and the nature of how we were shooting,
04:35which was very off-kilter.
04:36But then you had all these beautiful moments come out of it
04:39that we didn't anticipate.
04:41Yeah, I was talking to Ali on the phone yesterday,
04:43and he reminded me that our very first day of filming
04:46was in a helicopter.
04:48You have to commit to what you're doing,
04:50and until you cross that Rubicon,
04:52there's a certain measure of dread and uncertainty
04:56and the feeling of, is this going to work?
04:58That compounded with the fact that we were, like,
05:01up in the air precariously in a helicopter,
05:04being buffeted around by the wind.
05:06It was a fitting first day.
05:08Neither of us were really great flyers,
05:11but as Donald and Roy, there was no nerves.
05:15Those first initial takes of just committing to what we were doing,
05:21accepting each other,
05:22and improvising the hell out of everything
05:25was an exhilarating way to start this rollercoaster ride.
05:29Spectacular hotel.
05:40Absolutely spectacular.
05:42And, uh...
05:43That sounds very ambitious.
05:45Where do you get the drive?
05:46Still so young, Donald.
05:47I got flair, and I'm smart,
05:48so I think that's going to make me successful.
05:51But I also want to stay humble.
05:53I think we're both actors who look for chances to take risks,
05:59chances to do something transformational
06:02and embrace walking the plank.
06:05This is a big plank to walk.
06:06I think we relished it and, you know, took it very seriously.
06:09I think we have to nurture empathy,
06:11and that's at stake now more than ever, it feels like.
06:14And the only way to do that
06:15is sometimes to confront it with its opposite.
06:19And we have to be aware of the things in the dark
06:22as much as we are of the things in the light.
06:24It's a movie about the making of Donald Trump,
06:26which is, in my feeling,
06:28sort of imperative and mandatory viewing
06:32for anyone in this country
06:34affected by his leadership, which is everyone.
06:37You know, this relationship with Roy Cohn
06:39and what Roy taught him,
06:40it's a story that people really don't know.
06:42It's a movie about the birth of his worldview,
06:46his moral, philosophical, and ethical framework.
06:52I think we're spending a lot of time
06:54reading a lot of things on the internet
06:56and looking to be told how to feel, how to think.
07:00I hope that hopefully this movie leads people
07:04towards a reconnection with their own humanity in a way
07:08and getting some level of understanding out of it.
07:10If you are pro-Trump, if you're anti-Trump,
07:13it's not telling you how to vote, as Ali said.
07:17If you liked Barbie, this movie is for you.
07:19If you didn't like Barbie, this movie is for you.
07:43If you liked Barbie, this movie is for you.
07:45If you liked Barbie, this movie is for you.
07:46If you liked Barbie, this movie is for you.
07:47If you liked Barbie, this movie is for you.
07:48If you liked Barbie, this movie is for you.
07:49If you liked Barbie, this movie is for you.
07:50If you liked Barbie, this movie is for you.
07:51If you liked Barbie, this movie is for you.
07:52If you liked Barbie, this movie is for you.
07:53If you liked Barbie, this movie is for you.
07:54If you liked Barbie, this movie is for you.
07:55If you liked Barbie, this movie is for you.
07:56If you liked Barbie, this movie is for you.
07:57If you liked Barbie, this movie is for you.
07:58If you liked Barbie, this movie is for you.
07:59If you liked Barbie, this movie is for you.
08:00If you liked Barbie, this movie is for you.
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