The effect of this choice is already being felt several industriesin both ways extremely predictable and some smaller ones. Sebastian Stan’s inability to find another partner AmountThe Actors on Actors interview series, for example, falls into the second category. “I couldn’t find another actor to do it with me because they were too scared to go and talk about this movie,” Stan said during a recent screening of his Donald Trump biopic, The Apprentice.

While this may seem like a pithy question on the surface, it gestures toward something much more sinister going on in entertainment and culture at large. Stan emphasized that he wasn’t pointing fingers at anyone specific; he couldn’t even “get past the publicists or the people representing” the actors, because they were too eager to be wrapped up in discourse about the president-elect. The same forces that kept people from signing up to sit across from him probably also played a role Rachel Zegler’s apology for posting “Fuck Donald Trump” on his Instagram story, for example.

“That’s when I think we lose the situation,” Stan continued. “Because if it really comes down to that — fear or that discomfort of talking about this — then we’re really going to have a problem.”

Fortunately, the brave Paul Walter Hauser seems to have no such qualms. “Should I do it?” he posted on Twitter (X) last night in response to the news about Stan. Looks like Apprentice the star was apparently meant to go on Amount series on Friday, the interview is unlikely to happen. Still, it’s good to know there are at least two people out there still willing to stick it to the man—or at least debate him in a public forum.

Sebastian Stan and director Ali Abassi attended #THE APPRENTICE Screening and #SebastianStan said he was invited to an interview with Variety Actor on Cast but couldn’t find an actor willing to do it with him because their publicists were hesitant to let them talk about this movie so… pic.twitter.com/cWRvzx0bHF

— MaggieMinLA (@MaggieMinLA) November 19, 2024

Even if that doesn’t happen, Stan had a few more pearls of wisdom to share at the screening. The actor went on to quote Carlos Lozada’s latest New York Times oped”Stop pretending that Trump is not who we are,” where the author writes, “There have been so many attempts to explain away Trump’s hold on the nation’s politics and cultural imagination, to recast him as deviant and temporary. “Normalizing” Trump became an affront to good taste, to norms, to the American experiment.”

“That’s the only way you’re going to understand this movie,” Stan continued. “All it’s saying is, ‘You can’t keep casting this person aside, especially after they’ve got the popular vote.’ with drive it?”