Sebastian Stan, who stars in The Apprentice, a biopic of Donald Trump focusing on his association in the 1970s with lawyer Roy Cohn, has said that other actors in Hollywood are too “afraid” of the president-elect to participate in press with him.

Stan claimed that he had failed to find a single peer who would appear opposite him in the Actors on Actors series run by industry magazine Variety, in which key awards contenders quiz each other.

During a recent Q&A about the film in Los Angeles alongside director Ali Abbasi, Stan – best known for his work in Marvel films – said: “I couldn’t find another actor to do it with me, because they were too afraid to go and talk about this movie. So I couldn’t do it.”

He added: “You know, I’ve got to do a lot of great things, and that’s not pointing at anyone specific. It was … we couldn’t get past the publicists or the people representing them, because [they were] too afraid to talk about this movie.”

His claim was confirmed to People magazine by Variety co-editor in chief Ramin Setoodeh. “What Sebastian said is accurate,” he said. “We invited him to participate in Actors on Actors, the biggest franchise of awards season, but other actors didn’t want to pair with him because they didn’t want to talk about Donald Trump.”

Stan said that he felt the response was ominous in terms of the film industry’s interactions with Trump after he comes into power in January.

“That’s when I think we lose the situation,” he continued. “Because if it really becomes like that – fear or that discomfort to talk about this – then we’re really going to have a problem.

“For many, the idea that Trump is the same as any one of us is a really difficult thing to deal with at the moment and I understand the emotions are very high, but I think that’s the only way you’re going to grasp this film,” said Stan.

“If all it’s saying is you cannot keep casting this person aside, especially after they get the popular vote, should we not give this a closer look and try to understand what it is about this person that’s even driving that?”

Trump called the biopic, which features a scene in which he rapes his ex-wife, Ivana, a “cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job” ahead of its release in the US, adding that it was “fake and classless” and took particular issue with its director and screenwriter.

Writing on Truth Social, Trump said: “So sad that HUMAN SCUM, like the people involved in this hopefully unsuccessful enterprise, are allowed to say and do whatever they want in order to hurt a Political Movement, which is far bigger than any of us. MAGA2024!”