Late in November of 2023, the world reeled upon learning that Sebastian Stan, best known for portraying the remaining 5/6ths of Bucky “The Winter Soldier” Barnes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, had signed on to play former president Donald Trump in the forthcoming biopic The Apprentice.
Reactions ranged from the nervous apprehension of those paying attention, to the quiet indifference of the lucky folks on North Sentinel Island where there is no internet and no one’s ever heard the word “covfefe.” Sure, Stan has already earned his stripes as a historical celebrity impersonator, especially with his Emmy-nominated run as Tommy Lee on Hulu’s Pam & Tommy in 2022. But something about the idea of turning the 41-year-old into the star of Fresh into the guy who did this one time.
Like, depending on which side of the aisle you fall on and how strongly you feel about these things, it’s either debilitatingly anti-erotic or the opposite, and neither one of those outcomes seems acceptable. With that in mind, let’s turn to the rest of the alumni of the MCU, consider possible biopic casting opportunities for them, and then immediately shut it all down.
Oscar Isaac must never portray Dick van Dyke, because their cockney accents are too similar
At issue is the matter of the thin and delicate veil separating reality from fiction. It is so, so simple to blur the boundaries between these two realms, mistaking the chaos and drama of movies and television for events in day to day life. We see the line crossed every day: Fake news reported as fact. Lies that turn the gears of history. The truce between what is and what isn’t is a fragile thing, and it must be treated with cautious respect.
If Oscar Isaac ever utilized the cockney accent that he employed to play Steven Grant in Moon Knight in order to mimic Dick van Dyke’s performance as work-a-day Bert in 1964’s Mary Poppins, the similarities would prove too similar. The walls of reality would become wafer thin, even transparent, and shatter like finest sugar glass. Art and life would imitate one another in a mind-rending Mobius strip of cause and effect. Time would fold in on itself, swallowed in a shroud of East-end rhyming slang and chim-chim-charoos.
Tatiana Maslany must not play Henry Kissinger because like, what would the audience for that look like?
I don’t know if there are any Henry Kissinger fans out there. I don’t know if there are a lot of people who want to see more gender-bent biopics of the architects of Vietnam and the Cambodian Civil War. If both groups exist, I don’t think that there’s probably a lot of Venn diagram crossover between them, or that either camp loved She-Hulk enough to follow Tatiana Maslany into the world of biographical fiction.
It doesn’t feel good to say this. Maslany is an exceptional performer. She could do the voice. She could do anything. What we’ve got here is a classic, Jurassic Park-style “could versus should” scenario. Yes, she could play tactical nuke enthusiast and 1960s sexpot Henry Kissinger, but should she? Actually, maybe. The more I think about it, the more I come around on the idea.
Jonathan Majors must not play Charlotte Brontë because what’s going on with that guy, you know?
Charlotte Brontë was a remarkable woman. The first in and last out of the Brontë sisters, she managed to have her second novel, Jane Eyre, professionally published, with nothing but her wit and a masculine pseudonym. She died at only 38 years old due to complications from pregnancy, having changed the course of English literature with only three published novels. And it’s not that Jonathan Majors couldn’t pull off the performance. He’s a mesmerizing thespian, and he’s elevated plenty of less-meaty roles in the past, stealing the show in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Creed III. It’s just that in the midst of his highly-publicized trial and seeming exodus from showbusiness, it seems prudent to wait things out and see where public opinion stands once everything settles down. Nobody’s jumping to any conclusions, and the guy deserves his day in court just like everybody else, but the last thing anyone wants is for the works of the Brontë sisters to be associated with problematic men.
