Summary

  • Sebastian Stan continues his trend of playing real-life people caught up in major scandals, as seen in his roles in Pam & Tommy and Dumb Money.
  • His role as Donald Trump in The Apprentice will be Stan's most controversial role yet, given the former president's history of scandals.
  • Despite the controversy, Stan is known for taking on complex roles and seems to embrace the challenge of portraying these scandal-ridden characters.

Sebastian Stan's role in the 2023 biographical comedy-drama Dumb Money's cast of characters is already quite a far cry from the massive, high-octane Marvel blockbusters he's most known for starring in. From Captain America: The First Avenger to Avengers: Infinity War and even in lending his voice to Marvel's animated anthology series What If...?, Stan has become synonymous with the MCU's enigmatic super fighter, Bucky Barnes.

In between over a decade of Marvel appearances, Stan also performed in roles that weren't attached to a major franchise and that were still big topics of conversation with audiences, such as his parts in The Martian, Hot Tub Time Machine, and Logan Lucky. While these performances are more similar to his part in Dumb Money than his MCU role, they fall outside a strange trend that keeps popping up in the actor's career. Stan's Dumb Money role continues a distinct pattern in just a handful of his performances, but the actor seems to be taking the trend in stride.

Sebastian Stan Keeps Playing Real-Life People Caught Up In Major Scandals

Sebastian Stan's Tommy Lee sitting on ledge with cigarette in hand in Pam and Tommy

Stan's Dumb Money role continues an odd trend that sees the actor play real-life people who get caught in the center of massive true-to-life scandals. The trend started when Stan ed the cast of the Pam & Tommy series as the Motley Crüe musician Tommy Lee. The 2022 biographical miniseries not only portrayed instances of Lee's turbulent marriage with model and actress Pamela Anderson but also depicted the infamous period when their unauthorized sex tape was leaked to the public, which initiated one of the biggest celebrity scandals of the '90s.

Just one year after depicting Lee's sex tape scandal, Stan ed Dumb Money's cast to play the role of Vlad Tenev. Dumb Money dramatized the true story of Wall Street's GameStop crisis, which found Stan's Tenev character wrapped up in scandal after his and co-founder Baijou Bhatt's financial company, Robinhood, froze all purchases and trades of the gaming retailer, GameStop. As portrayed in Dumb Money, Robinhood's role in the scandal led to a Congressional investigation into the company and GameStop's short squeeze.

Sebastian Stan's Role As Donald Trump Will Be The Actor's Most Controversial Role Yet

Sebastian Stan as Vlad Tenev clutching a beer while on the phone in Dumb Money

Stan's tendency toward scandal-ridden characters is set to continue, as the actor will appear in the biographical movie, The Apprentice. Under director Ali Abbasi and beside confirmed actors Jeremy Strong and Maria Bakalova, Stan will play a young Donald Trump in a story that will portray Trump's rise in the New York real estate business during the 1970s and '80s. The movie is said to focus on themes of power, corruption, and deception (via The Hollywood Reporter), which indicates that The Apprentice will likely portray some level of scandal that occurred during this time in Trump's life.

Beyond the era that The Apprentice has chosen to depict, Trump has been the center of countless scandals and can be considered one of the most controversial figures in recent history. Because of this, Stan's role as Trump will inevitably be the actor's most controversial yet. However, as Stan's acting catalog has long proven, Stan is no stranger to taking on complex roles, which may mean his parts in Pam & Tommy, Dumb Money, and The Apprentice are adventurous challenges he's set his mind on tackling.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter