Josh Brolin Opens Up About Friendship With Donald Trump — And Why He Isn’t Afraid
With Netflix’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery on the way, Josh Brolin opens up about his pre-presidency friendship with Donald Trump and why he isn’t afraid to talk about it.
Josh Brolin is out doing press for the next Knives Out movie, and the conversation took a turn I didn’t expect: his past friendship with Donald Trump. Yes, that came up. And yes, he had thoughts.
The movie part first
Brolin is playing Monsignor Wicks in Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, which hits Netflix on December 12, 2025. Wicks is a domineering religious figure with unmistakable cult-leader energy. If that sounds like it might be slyly modeled on a real-world personality, you’re not alone. In Glass Onion, Edward Norton’s tech mogul had clear Elon Musk parallels; naturally, people are wondering if Wicks is Brolin’s Trump riff.
According to Brolin, it isn’t. He told The Independent he didn’t base Wicks on Trump and even joked he could pretend it came from a Trump-ish place, but that’s not how he approached it. His read on Wicks is simpler: once the character gets a taste of power, the boundaries disappear. That’s the engine.
Then it got personal
Brolin says he knew Trump long before the White House years, back when Trump was the builder/entrepreneur version of himself. He says they spent time together after Brolin did Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. That timeline is a little messy in the retelling, but the gist is: this was pre-presidency, and Brolin feels like he met a different guy than the one dominating politics now.
'I’m not scared of Trump, because even though he says he’s staying for ever, it’s just not going to happen. And if it does, then I’ll deal with that moment. But having been a friend of Trump before he was president, I know a different guy.'
How Brolin frames Trump now
He pointed to Trump’s origin story as a developer, even referencing a $400 million hotel project in the late 1970s. Brolin’s take: he’s sure there was plenty of corruption back then, which fascinates him, but what we’re looking at today is something else entirely — power without much in the way of guardrails.
He also gave Trump credit where he thinks it’s due: marketing. In Brolin’s words (paraphrased), there’s no one better at spotting a weakness in the broader public and exploiting it. That, he suggests, is why so many people see Trump as a kind of mascot — and why, in his view, the phenomenon has as much to do with the audience’s need for validation as it does with Trump himself.
Bottom line
No, Brolin didn’t model his new villain on Trump. But he’s clearly thought a lot about Trump’s evolution — from flashy builder to political force — and he’s not shy about saying he once considered the man a friend. The more surprising part is how calmly he takes the whole thing in stride, even as he plays a character who thrives on unchecked power. Not subtle timing, but that’s kind of the point.