One of the scariest moments in a film this year will invariably belong to Jeremy Strong.
Early into The Apprentice, the new film about Donald Trump’s rise that premiered Monday at the Cannes Film Festival, Strong, playing notorious lawyer Roy Cohn, takes Trump, played by Sebastian Stan, into the room where he secretly records phone calls. With darkness behind in his intense eyes, Strong, as Cohn, tells Trump about how he orchestrated the death penalty for Ethel Rosenberg, the convicted Soviet spy. He explains how while others argued that her life should be saved because she was a mother, he disagreed. “She betrayed our country and she has to die,” he says, with no remorse. It feels like evil incarnate leaping off the screen.
Strong’s work is another master class from the Succession star, currently on his way to a Tony for An Enemy of the People on Broadway. It feels like one of the first performances of this year’s Cannes that has true Oscar potential. That is, if the entire prospect of this movie doesn't scare people away.