Roy Cohn: Ruthless McCarthy lieutenant-turned-Trump mentor so universally loathed he was ‘a new strain of sonofab****’

He was a lawyer with a two-syllable name, a colourfully complicated personal life and a Rasputin-like grip on United States politics – especially in New York.

The very mention of Roy Cohn during his four decades of headline ubiquity could spark anything from anger to hatred to fear; his shadowy legend persists nearly 40 years after the death of a man dubbed a “new strain of sonofabitch” – by his own autobiography co-author, no less.

Now those that missed Cohn’s infamous antics the first time around will meet him in a new film premiering at Cannes, The Apprentice, by director Ali Abbasi. Pop culture darling Jeremy Strong from Succession stars as Cohn, the Joseph McCarthy lieutenant who created the blueprint that Donald Trump followed all the way to the presidency.

The Deadline announcement calls the first Trump biopic “a mentor-protege story,” with a film’s summary on the Cannes site explaining that it “charts a young Donald Trump’s ascent to power through a Faustian deal with the influential right-wing lawyer and political fixer” himself. The only still of the film released so far shows the pair in the back of a town car, Strong as Cohn fixing his steely eyes on Sebastian Stan, who plays Trump.

Trump’s name inspires a range of emotions mirroring those elicited by any mention of Cohn. The future 45th president was guided and represented by the Bronx-raised lawyer during his ascent through the ranks of New York business and society; one need only give a cursory read of Cohn’s eponymous memoir to see Trumpisms.

The word “losers?” It’s on the third page of Chapter One. “Lousy?” It’s on Page 37.

“Donald Trump is Roy Cohn,” Matthew Tyrnauer, director of the 2019 documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn, said in an interview with NPR