Sebastian Stan Says He Can’t Do a ‘Variety’ Interview Because Hollywood Is ‘Afraid’ of His Movie

Sebastian Stan claims other people in Hollywood are too “afraid” to discuss his controversial movie The Apprentice.

The former Gossip Girl star, 42, who plays Donald Trump in director Ali Abbasi’s film about the 45th U.S. President’s beginnings as a real estate mogul in New York City, alleged at a recent screening of the film that he was invited to participate in Variety’s ‘Actors on Actors’ series, but couldn’t ultimately take part because he ran into difficulty being matched with another performer, according to Buzzfeed.

“They were too afraid to go and talk about this movie, so I couldn’t do it,” Stan claimed at the Nov. 19 event, the outlet reported. “And it doesn’t matter, that’s OK. It’s not to point a finger at anybody — I’ve got to do a lot of great things.”

Stan said there wasn’t “anyone specific,” at fault, adding, “we couldn’t get past the publicists or the people representing them because they were too afraid to talk about this movie.”

Stan said a lack of discussion of the movie and Trump himself is a disservice. “If it really becomes that fear or that discomfort to talk about this, we’re really going to have a problem,” he said.

PEOPLE reached out to representatives for Stan, but did not immediately hear back.

In a statement to PEOPLE, Variety Co-Editor in Chief Ramin Setoodeh, confirmed Stan’s account: “What Sebastian said is accurate. 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.”

Variety’s ongoing series pairs actors for in-depth conversations about the industry. Past duos have included Margot Robbie and Cillian Murphy, Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig, and Jennifer Aniston and Quinta Brunson.

Hours after the event, Black Bird Emmy winner Paul Walter Hauser seemingly offered up his participation on X (formerly Twitter). “I’ll do it?” he wrote. The pair previously co-starred together in 2017’s I, Tonya.

In The Apprentice, Stan — who also appears in the new drama A Different Man — plays a young Trump in the 1970s and 80s. The film focuses on the relationship between Stan’s Trump and his scheming lawyer Roy Cohn (played by Succession star Jeremy Strong).

A Trump spokesperson previously told PEOPLE that The Apprentice, which was released in October, “is garbage,” adding, “this ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should not see the light of day, and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store. It belongs in a dumpster fire.”