Jeremy Strong Defends ‘Humanizing’ ‘Despicable’ Roy Cohn With ‘The Apprentice’ Movie

Jeremy Strong is defending his new movie, the Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice, and his role in it as Trump right-hand Roy Cohn, saying Tuesday that “It’s not a pro-Trump movie or an anti-Trump movie.”

Despite describing Cohn as a “very, very vicious, despicable person,” a “demonic Peter Pan,” and “one of the worst humans of the 20th century” during his sit down with Stephen Colbert on The Late Show Tuesday, Strong insisted that “it’s a dangerous idea that you could portray someone as ‘too human.’”

Amid outrage over his depiction in the film, Trump and his supporters tried—and failed—to block the movie and have now resolved to pursue their lawsuit against the filmmakers. In spite of his efforts, the movie received the green light to hit theaters in October, ahead of the November election. Depending on who you ask, news of its release might seem like a win for anti-Trumpers, but some Trump detractors are just as displeased about its October release, arguing that it “humanizes” Trump and Cohn, Colbert said.

“I think the director, Ali Abbassai, attempted to hold a mirror up to [human] nature, hold a mirror up to these people and to our society,” Strong continued. “I think [the movie] is not a polemic. It is not partisan. [The movie’s] not trying to tell you who to vote for. It’s trying to examine these individuals and take them seriously as human beings which is not something we tend to do. We tend to otherize and demonize and mock these people.”

Strong seemed to realize that he was literally sitting down at a show that spends a significant portion of its episodes doing just that. “Well, thank you for stopping by,” Colbert quipped in response to the unintentional jab.

Strong emphasized that part of the “danger” of implying a portrayal is “too human” contributes to ideologies behind banning certain books and movies, which almost happened with The Apprentice, he said. “It’s very loaded. The movie narrowly escaped the jaws of being banned in this country, which is not something that should be happening in this country in this day and age but it very nearly did.”

He then revealed a Cohn scene that didn’t make into the film’s final cut, based on Cohn’s elaborate frog collection. “We did shoot a scene—I asked the costume designer to go find a full body frog suit. And I was in my bedroom with Donald [Trump] and I sang the entirety of the George Hearn song ‘I Am What I Am’ from La Cage Aux Folles in a frog suit. But it’s not in the movie. I think it should be.”