“Right now, I am blasting a playlist called ‘My Ivana’ that I was listening to while working on the movie,” says Maria Bakalova, who plays a fictionalized version of Ivana Trump in The Apprentice, which made its splashy Cannes Film Festival 2024 debut on Monday.
Bakalova’s curated soundtrack—which includes ABBA’s “Money, Money, Money,” Charlotte Cardin’s “Dirty Dirty,” and Madonna’s “Material Girl”—is merely one way she is paying tribute to her character in Ali Abbasi’s fictionalized account of Donald Trump’s rise in the New York City real estate world. Getting ready for her film’s starry red-carpet premiere, she tells Vanity Fair, “We wanted to do, let’s say, power styling” that nods to Ivana, but remains modern. “Something that feels like her, but in 2024—keeping it young and fresh and contemporary.”
Written by Vanity Fair special correspondent Gabriel Sherman and starring Sebastian Stan as a young Trump and Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn, The Apprentice “is remarkable because it’s an exploration into the underbelly of the American empire,” Bakalova says. “If you’re born there, if you’re born somewhere else, you know about this place, the United States, the land of freedom and opportunity,” she continues, “and it’s a beautiful exploration of New York with interesting characters that are driven by power. What are you ready to sacrifice in order to achieve your dream and desire?” For Bakalova, the aim is “always to make people feel and be moved” by the characters. “You can criticize, you can sympathize with them, as long as you feel something for them. I think that’s most important.”
Bakalova felt an instant pull to her Dolce & Gabbana premiere dress, which she laid eyes on for the first time about a month ago. “It was a mind-blowing moment because it was just perfection,” she recalls of the 2016 archival piece, shown to her by stylist Jessica Paster. “I’m wearing this beautiful, gorgeous Dolce Alta Moda gown—it’s emerald green, white, [and has] this beautiful painting of all the people behind the single dress.” The skirt of Bakalova’s ornate gown features a print “honoring all the designers, all the painters that are doing the details of these art pieces that we’re having the chance to wear,” she says. “It’s making me feel like a princess. It’s special, it’s fresh, and it has a feeling of festivity as well. It’s a look that I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”
Speaking from Hôtel Martinez’s Chopard suite, Bakalova marvels at the jewels that will be adorning her look—87 carats of diamonds and 72 carats of emeralds, to be exact. “I have no words to describe it,” she admits. Bakalova is, however, able to speak on the many ways Ivana has influenced her look—from the socialite’s penchant for matching her purse to her shoes to her carefully constructed updos. “She’s always had this unflappable hair,” says Bakalova, “and we want to keep it unflappable, but not that big, because again, it’s 2024—not the ’70s or ’80s,” she says of Patrick Wilson’s sleek hairstyling. And while Ivana often inhabited the “mob wife” aesthetic of bold lips and dark eye makeup, Bakalova prefers her skin “to be glowy and shiny.” As such, makeup artist James Molloy invoked Bakalova’s character through a distinctive eyeliner “that feels like Ivana, but also like Brigitte Bardot,” she says.
Bakalova’s connections to her real-life character go beyond the red carpet. During our conversation, she excitedly recalls how Molloy had previously done Ivana’s makeup and says she had lunch earlier that day with someone who claimed to be one of Ivana’s “best friends.” For Bakalova, “it’s otherworldly to have these connections,” given the fact that she never got to meet Ivana, who died at 73 in 2022.
“I didn’t know a lot about her at the beginning. I knew that she’s Eastern European, that she was this beautiful, gorgeous model. She and Donald had been the golden couple of the ’80s—that was most of my knowledge,” says Bakalova. “When I started looking into interviews, I was tremendously impressed by her being so driven and outspoken—knowing what she wants, knowing how to get it done—and at the same time very feminine, very elegant, but with a position.”
She continues, “She managed to be a great boss lady in a very badass way, but at the same time has been a very devoted mother. She was literally doing it all—going to Atlantic City in the morning, having breakfast with the kids, then getting ready for an event. That’s the one thing that people who knew her keep repeating about her: Ivana just loved life. She loved to live, she loved to eat, loved to dance. She was just this larger-than-life character. And I’m feeling privileged that I got a chance to get to know a little bit more about her.”
The Apprentice, which has yet to find a distributor but debuted to a reported 11-minute standing ovation, has courted plenty of buzz—and even got the attention of Trump’s presidential campaign, namely for a scene in which the character of Trump reportedly sexually assaults Ivana. (Though Ivana accused Trump of rape during their divorce deposition, she rebutted the claim in 1993.) Trump has stated that he intends to pursue legal action over the film’s “malicious defamation,” which the director was asked to address at a Tuesday press conference. “Everybody talks about him suing a lot of people,” said Abbasi. “They don’t talk about his success rate, though.”
It is the second time in two election cycles that the 27-year-old actor has found herself in the center of a politically significant project. Bakalova’s Hollywood breakout came courtesy of 2020’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, in which she played Borat’s daughter. A headline-making scene involving Bakalova and Rudy Giuliani, which he later called a “complete fabrication,” helped earn her an Oscar nomination—and gave the Trump team a public relations headache. But Bakalova resists tethering the two titles completely. “I’m really attracted to playing interesting, multilayered, challenging characters. That’s the connection that I’m making,” she says. “The rest of it is just circumstances. I’m not American. I was born and raised in Bulgaria; I don’t even have the right to vote. So for me, I don’t look at the political side of it at all.”
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