In Ali Abbasi’s mordant The Apprentice, which has just hit theaters despite Donald Trump’s attempt to block it, Maria Bakalova plays Ivana Trump opposite Sebastian Stan’s Donald, persuasively capturing the late Czechoslovakian skier-model’s metamorphosis from naïve girl-about-Manhattan to ambitious nouveau riche interior designer and chatelaine of Trump Tower. Drawing on Harry Hurt III’s 1993 Trump biography, which itself drew on Ivana’s sworn divorce deposition, the film depicts Trump’s alleged rape of her. Abassi shot the scene matter-of-factly. “It always existed in the script,” Bakalova says. “It was difficult to read, difficult to do, and it’s difficult to watch. It’s disgusting, it’s gross, it’s painful, but I think it was my responsibility to portray it as realistically as possible. How do you continue after something like that? Because you cannot erase it, and the feeling of it will remain forever. But then these two people,” she marvels, “somehow put on a mask and pretend they’re this perfect couple.” —Graham Fuller