Inside Maria Bakalova's Ivana Trump Transformation for The Apprentice: Accents, Long Nails, Big Shoulder Pads (Exclusive)

To play a larger-than-life figure like Ivana Trump, Maria Bakalova knew she’d need to do much more than wear fabulous fur coats. 

“I did a lot of prepping,” says the Borat 2 Oscar nominee, who portrays Donald Trump’s first wife in the controversial movie The Apprentice. 

“You do want to play the person with respect and dignity,” says the Bulgarian actress, who calls Ivana a woman who was “ahead of her time” and “outspoken and brave.”

The film, which has fictionalized elements, is set in the 1970s and '80s as a young Donald (Sebastian Stan), under the influence of infamous lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), emerges from his father’s shadow to become a power player in New York real estate. 

His romance with — and eventual marriage to — young Czech model Ivana Zelníčková is featured prominently, including how she balked at signing a prenuptial agreement. 

To master the mannerisms of the socialite, who died in 2022 at age 73, “I watched everything that was out there. I watched her clips. I watched her appearances, late-night shows, early mornings,” says Bakalova, who also read books the Raising Trump author wrote. 

The Bodies Bodies Bodies actress changed her physicality to imitate Ivana, who was a ski racer in addition to being a model. “She’s well-trained,” notes Bakalova.

The costumes also helped her get into character. “I got to wear a lot of beautiful clothes with big shoulder pads and grow my nails long.”

Even though Bakalova is a fellow Eastern European native, mastering Ivana’s Czech accent was difficult. 

"There are a lot of differences,” between Bulgarian and Czech accents, she explains. “Funny enough, I've been working on my accent for four years since I moved to the States. And now for the last year I've been trying to completely destroy everything that I built and build a completely different Eastern European accent.”

She says Stan was a the perfect costar who’s “very dedicated to everything that he does.” 

“He knows how to search and find the right colors of a character. And he's a great partner, which is important because when you have to build relationship, especially in our situation, our story, these people have been together for over 10 years. To put it on screen for an hour, you need to know a lot about them and you need to talk about it. And we did that,” she adds. 

“We had a lot of rehearsals. We had a lot of table readings. We were sending each other back and forth text messages with, ‘look at this article, look at this video, look at this idea.’ ”

The film features a controversial rape scene, in which Stan’s Donald character assaults Bakalova’s Ivana character after they are married. The moment is inspired by an allegation Ivana made — and later recanted — during her split from Donald. The two divorced in 1990. 

A spokesperson for Donald, the former U.S. president who is once again the Republican nominee in the 2024 election, has dismissed the movie as “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."

Donald also told PEOPLE in 2016 that the alleged incident “never took place.”

For that moment in the movie, Stan and Bakalova worked with an intimacy coordinator and a stunt coordinator. “It was a closed set,” says the actress. “We felt safe.”

Bakalova’s other new film, Triumph, is much different fare. The dark comedy is set in post-Communist Bulgaria in the 1990s. She plays a young woman believed to have powers to communicate with an alien that’s guiding a team trying to excavate an artifact that holds the promise to change humanity. 

“It soon becomes clear the expedition will not reveal a powerful cosmic relic (nor a space capsule or a fountain of youth), but perhaps something else much more realistic — and previously completely unknown — will be unearthed,” according to a synopsis.

Says Bakalova, “It represents a political craziness, satire, which we unfortunately witness a lot.”

Bulgaria submitted the film as the country’s pick to compete in the Best International Feature category at the 2025 Oscars.

The Apprentice is in theaters Oct. 11. Triumph had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 8.