How Sebastian Stan transformed into Donald Trump for “The Apprentice — ”with help from soy sauce and ramen

"I called a nutritionist who I worked with before, and I said, 'How do I quickly get bloating in my face."

Sebastian Stan had some bigly concerns about playing Donald Trump in The Apprentice, not the least of which being that he doesn't particularly look like the orange-tinted former president.

Recalling his initial reaction to the role, Stan tells Entertainment Weekly his first thought was, "How the hell am I going to do this?" His friends and family also had concerns: "I had people tell me not to do it. I had people tell me I don't look like him. I had people tell me that it's not safe for me to do it. I had people say that I shouldn't try to alienate half the country."

But Stan found those warnings "weirdly motivating" and decided to take the plunge. He stars in The Apprentice — in theaters Oct. 11 — as a much younger Trump who, in the late '70s and '80s, grew from a small-time wannabe into a symbol of American wealth and excess under the mentorship of his infamous lawyer, Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). While the bulk of his preparation involved deep research into Trump's history and psychology, Stan also changed his appearance to look more like the real estate scion in his late 20s and early 30s. How much makeup and prosthetics would be used to aid that transformation remained an ongoing debate with his director, Ali Abbasi, right up to production.

Related: Made in America: How polarizing biopic The Apprentice charts Donald Trump's origin story

"Ali and I never knew how much prosthetics we really needed," he says. "I think we were both concerned that I don't look like him in some ways, but I was always trying to steer to less prosthetics because I didn't want to go with a complete likeness. I wanted to go for the essence.

Abbasi also favored a "less is more" approach, but he didn't always feel that way. "I started obsessing a lot, thinking we really need to find someone who looks like [Trump] because I didn't want this to look like all these historical dramas where you have to suspend your disbelief," he explains. "And then I realized those are really not the skills we need here because the unique situation with Donald Trump is he's almost like a walking, living icon. So if you do a little bit more of that imitation or get too close, then you are in mockery or parody, like Saturday Night Live."

Ultimately, Stan turned to makeup artists Jason Collins and David Williams, along with hairstylist Barry Lee Moe, who all had helped turn him into another living icon, Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, for the 2022 limited series Pam & Tommy. "They came on, and we were able to really find the right thing, but for a while, we were getting closer to shooting, and we hadn't quite agreed on the prosthetics," Stan says.

Abbasi also suggested that Stan start packing on some pounds. "Ali said, 'Look, maybe you should start gaining weight in your face because you're older now, so your cheeks are more hollow, and it's not Marvel," Stan recalls with a laugh. "So I called a nutritionist who I worked with before, and I said, 'How do I quickly get bloating in my face.'" But there was also a catch: Stan didn't want to use alcohol to gain weight as he was already getting into character as the famously teetotaling Trump. So, the nutritionist came back with some unusual advice. "He was like, 'Then what I need you to do is get ramen and put a bunch of soy sauce packets in the ramen and start having that, and you're going to get the salt in the face."

The film's decade-spanning period presented additional hurdles. When The Apprentice starts, Trump is in his late 20s and still drawing comparisons to a young Robert Redford. By the end, he more closely resembles the pouty-lipped, swoopy-haired, overly-tanned, middle-aged man who would later win the presidency. "I think the most important thing was tracking with Ali very specifically: How do we see what we see today slowly become more and more pronounced?" Stan explains. "He had very bushy eyebrows; he gained some weight; his hair was changing. So, there were changes to the prosthetics and the makeup, but not drastic. Just enough so you can understand the process."

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Still, the most crucial aspect of Stan's transformation was becoming more like Trump on the inside. He started by throwing himself into his research. "Fortunately, there are extensive amounts of material out there — certainly on YouTube, in documentaries, interviews he's done — and I compiled a collage of things, quotes, point of views from interviews over the years, videos, and I just studied them as best as I could for as long as I could."

Related: The Apprentice stars Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong say biopic does not attempt to 'vilify' Donald Trump

That thorough research was crucial to the filming process, as Abbasi favored an improvisational approach. Using Gabriel Sherman's rigorously researched script as a backbone, the director trusted his actors to ad-lib portions of scenes. "Ali wanted a very sort of free-flowing, spontaneous documentary-style take on this, which required a lot of improvisation," Stan says. "It meant that Jeremy and I had to be extremely well-read in terms of not just our characters but also the time period and what was happening in New York at the time: who was the mayor, who was playing for the New York Mets, what were the charities, tax breaks, and connections."

Stan and Strong also opted to stay in character throughout production. "I never saw him out of costume, and he never saw me out of costume. We never really met or spoke outside of the scenes or when we were on set," Stan says of working with his costar. While Strong has received criticism in the past for his all-or-nothing approach to acting, both performers found it necessary to dedicate themselves "100 percent" to their characters for the duration of the shoot. "There's a lot of misinformation about process and approaches to things, and that's largely because there have been other actors that have taken that for their own publicity and ran away with it," Stan says, adding, "I think every job requires a certain degree of [dedication], and this one had to be 24/7 for both of us."

Related: The Apprentice is a riveting if familiar account of Donald Trump's years spent at Roy Cohn's knee

Beyond gathering facts to add to his improv "arsenal," Stan also came away from his studies with a better idea of what drives Trump as a person. "Look, I am not a therapist…. I am an actor. I can study the situation as best as I can, and this is just an interpretation of what I have gathered or where my instinct has led me," he explains. "But if you do the research, there's a lot that you can understand about what may have been a driving force in his life, and this is all separate from the gimmicks and the lips." 

Among those core qualities, Stan saw in Trump a deep need to be heard and to win at all costs — the latter of which he found troublingly relatable. "I think my concern was feeling that I understood a drive to rise, to overcome at whatever cost, and to win," says the actor, who immigrated to the United States from Romania with his mother at age 12. "I understood that simply from my own very, very small, humble beginnings with the American dream. We love a winner in this country; it's just a fact."

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.