Sebastian Stan gained 15 pounds to play Donald Trump

Sebastian Stan is preparing for a movie that will spark controversy no matter what. The actor stars in "The Apprentice," where he plays Donald Trump right before the rise of his real estate empire. It's a role that required someone bold and brave, capable of tuning out the conversation to deliver a performance recognizable as Trump, but also its own thing. 

In a new interview, Stan opened up about the copious amount of research he did to play Trump and the physical transformation he underwent for the part. In a profile with Variety, Stan showed writer Daniel D'Addario a selfie of himself pouting in front of the mirror, showing him topless and 15 pounds overweight. Stan revealed that he and director Ali Abbasi had a tight schedule to shoot the film. “How much weight can you gain?” asked Abbasi. 

D'Addario was shocked by Stan's physical transformation, particularly since he's known for his performances in Marvel films. “You’d be surprised,” said Stan. “You can gain a lot of weight in two months.”

Stan also talked about his preparation for the role, which required him to look at many videos and photos of Trump in order to assimilate and adopt his physicality while keeping things as natural as possible. “I had 130 videos on his physicality on my phone,” said Stan. “And 562 videos that I had pulled with pictures from different time periods — from the ’70s all the way to today — so I could pull out his speech patterns and try to improvise like him.”

More details about 'The Apprentice'

"The Apprentice" stars Stan, Jeremy Strong and Maria Bakalova. It premieres in the US on October 11th. 

Following the film's premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, Donald Trump's legal team issued various notices to the film's distribution company. "We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers," said Trump's legal team to NBC News in May. "This 'film' is pure malicious defamation, should not see the light of day, and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store, it belongs in a dumpster fire.”