Sylvester Stallone Turned Down Trump's Hollywood Envoy Job: "Thank You and Ciao"

Sylvester Stallone never asked to be a presidential envoy. He found out he’d been appointed to the role the same way the rest of us did: watching TV. In a new interview with The Sunday Times, the action icon says Trump’s January 2025 announcement naming him, Mel Gibson, and Jon Voight as Special Envoys to Hollywood caught him completely off guard.

His response to Trump was simple.“I said thank you and ciao, because it’s impossible.”Why impossible? Stallone says Hollywood doesn’t function as a single operation. It’s more like a collection of“feudal states,”each one doing its own thing and refusing to take outside direction. Bold comparison, but anyone who’s followed the industry’s endless studio battles probably nodded along.

So Stallone and Gibson stepped aside, while Jon Voight stayed on and is actively pushing for a federal film and TV tax incentive, which Trump endorsed in an August Truth Social post. Stallone, for his part, has donated to both parties and spoke warmly about Trump after the 2024 election, so there’s no bad blood here.

Could a federal tax incentive actually keep productions from fleeing overseas, or is Hollywood too stubborn to be governed? Sound off in the comments.