Sylvester Stallone, the star of the “Rocky” films, learned he had been named one of President Donald Trump’s three special ambassadors to Hollywood the same way the public did — by watching television, he told The Sunday Times in an interview reported September 21, 2026. By his own account, nobody ran the idea past him first.
Stallone, who gave the lengthy interview to promote his autobiography, “The Steps,” said the appointment caught him completely off guard — and that he eventually told the president the assignment would never work.
Asked whether he had shared those doubts with Trump, Stallone said: “Yes, and I said thank you and ciao, because it’s impossible.” He continued: “Hollywood works and it will evolve. It’s corporate and corporate people won’t want to hear me tell them about finance.”
An Announcement He Saw on TV
The appointment, he recalled, “just happened.” The actor was watching TV one night when a broadcast began reading off names — his own, and those of fellow actors Mel Gibson and Jon Voight. Stallone said his reaction was disbelief, and that he asked aloud whether he had heard it correctly. Had anyone consulted him beforehand, he said, he would have told them the idea was unworkable.
Trump announced in January 2025 that Stallone, Gibson and Voight would serve as his “Special Ambassadors” to Hollywood, a business he called a “great but very troubled place.” What the three men were actually supposed to do was never clarified, and no job description followed the announcement.
Six Studios and Little Kingdoms
Asked whether he had reservations about the appointment, Stallone said he did, and he explained why in the terms of someone who has worked inside the business for decades. “Hollywood, I guess it’s like feudal states. They have their little kingdoms,” he said. You do not walk into six studios and tell them how to run their operations, he added, and he, Gibson and Voight are all people inclined to do their own thing.
Stallone’s account arrives as he promotes “The Steps,” a book that has him revisiting a career and a set of relationships stretching back decades — including one with the man now in the Oval Office.
No Sign of a Wider Rift
The two have orbited each other for years. At a charity event in 1997, Stallone was photographed miming a punch at Trump. In 2016, the actor said he “loved” him. After Trump won the 2024 election, it was Stallone who brought him onstage at a Mar-a-Lago gala, billing him as a “second George Washington” and “a really mythical character.”
The warmth has continued since. Last year, Stallone was named a Kennedy Center honoree, and Trump presented him with a medal during an Oval Office ceremony.
Stallone was not the only one caught off guard. Gibson has also said he was surprised by the Hollywood announcement, though he suggested back then that he was ready to take on the job for Trump. Voight, the third name on the list, was likewise folded into a project whose scope was never publicly defined.
The episode offers a snapshot of how the appointment actually landed: three actors announced as envoys to an industry none of them runs, tasked with repairing something the president described in sweeping terms but never spelled out. One of them watched it unfold on his own television set and decided it could not be done.
Turning down the job, however, seems to have done nothing to sour Stallone’s wider relationship with Trump. He delivered his answer, by his own telling, in gentle terms — a thank you, a goodbye and a clear explanation of why the assignment was never going to survive contact with Hollywood.