The son of Audrey Hepburn tried to strike a measured tone as he responded to fierce backlash against Ivanka Trump, who attended her father’s inaugural ball Monday night while wearing a replica of the famous Givenchy gown worn by his mother in the 1954 film “Sabrina.”
In an interview with the Daily Mail, Sean Hepburn Ferrer graciously said he’s not surprised that Ivanka Trump would want to pay tribute to his mother. But Ferrer also indicated that his mother’s views wouldn’t align with Trump’s draconian policies and harsh rhetoric. Indeed, the Daily Mail reported that Ferrer “suggested” that his mother, a longtime UNICEF ambassador who survived Nazi occupation during World War II, would be sympathetic to criticism expressed by Right Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington.
Budde clearly made herself an enemy of Trump and his family when she addressed the new president directly during an interfaith inauguration prayer service at Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday, and pleaded with him to show compassion toward immigrants, LGBTQ+ children and “the people in our country who are scared now,” as the Daily Mail and Washington Post reported.
During Budde’s sermon, the president, Ivanka Trump and other members of the Trump family became visibly uncomfortable, with Tiffany Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and others seen on camera exchanging angry comments. The bishop urged Trump to help those fleeing war zones, to have “mercy” on children who “fear that their parents will be taken away” and to consider the “gay, lesbian, transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives.”
Budde’s sermon came the day after Trump signed a first-day executive order, proclaiming that the federal government would only recognize “two sexes, male and female.” Advocates say the order would lead to a “full erasure” of transgender rights. Trump also is in the process of enacting the largest deportation of immigrants in U.S. history, no doubt prompting Budde to plead with him to consider “the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals.”
Trump did not speak at the service, though he and Vice President J.D. Vance exchanged a quick glance when Budde mentioned that the way to honor dignity is by refusing to mock or demonize people, as the Daily Mail also reported. Outside the cathedral, Trump derided the service to waiting news crews as “not too exciting.” And, on early Wednesday, he launched a tirade against Budde on Truth Social, calling her a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater,” the Washington Post said. He said her statements were “inappropriate” and he said she and her church “owe the public an apology.”
In his interview with the unabashedly pro-Trump Daily Mail, Ferrer sounded as though he wanted to avoid saying anything too political, as he addressed Ivanka Trump’s choice to commission a re-creation of the black-and-white Hubert de Givenchy gown. On Ivanka Trump’s behalf, the White House issued a statement, saying that she was “honored” to wear the gown of the Oscar-winning actor, who “has long been a personal inspiration.”
With apparent appreciation, Ferrer said he wasn’t surprised that Ivanka Trump would draw inspiration from his mother, an international style icon, who embodied “elegance, which has its roots in her inner beauty and spirit.” He said he expected that Trump’s oldest daughter grew up in a family that knew his mother as a household name. Ferrer also noted that that Ivanka Trump wore the dress for such an important occasion as a presidential inauguration, which he said also coincided with the 32nd anniversary of his mother’s death on Jan. 20, 1993 and “most of all,” Martin Luther King Jr. day. “What a cocktail,” Ferrer said.
Ferrer furthermore mentioned a surprising Trump family link to his mother. Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples, was on the advisory board for the Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund in the early 1990s and they they had celebrated their daughter Tiffany Trump’s first birthday with a charity event titled “Breakfast with Tiffany”—a nod to Hepburn’s other classic film.
But “when pushed” on what Hepburn would think of Trump’s MAGA politics now, or Ivanka Trump’s alliance with them, Ferrer pointed out that his humanitarian mother “fought on behalf of the disenfranchised children worldwide regardless of the ideological environment in which they were born in.” That’s when the Daily Mail also reported that Ferrer indicated that her “outlook was more in line” with Budde’s.
Amid the backlash, critics said that Ivanka Trump’s choice to wear the gown was “gross” and “insulting” to Hepburn’s memory. On Fauxmoi sub-Reddit , one person wrote: “Before Hepburn was a glamorous, famous actress, she was a rebel against the very political movement Ivanka’s father emulates.”
Another wrote: “Yep everything Audrey fans have said is true. She witnessed first-hand the devastation of the Nazis, and it stayed with her for the rest of her life and inspired her work with UNICEF.”
Though born and raised by an aristocratic family in Belgium, England and the Netherlands, Hepburn suffered famine and other privations during World War II, after the Germans invaded the Netherlands. In her own way, the aspiring ballet dancer reportedly resisted fascism and the Nazi occupation by giving performances to raise money to support the Dutch resistance. She also reportedly delivered an underground newspaper and food to downed Allied pilots hiding in the nearby forest.
Hepburn’s hatred of fascism and the Nazis was especially resonant to people on Reddit. Trump has talked about admiring authoritarian leaders, with his former chief of staff John Kelly calling him “a fascist.” Years before Vance decided to become a Trump loyalist, he publicly called his new boss an “idiot” and “reprehensible” and privately compared him to Adolf Hitler.
Another person on Reddit quoted Hepburn as once saying: “Don’t discount anything awful you hear or read about the Nazis. It’s worse than you could ever imagine.”
“That is why she (Hepburn) is remembered as an icon,” another person wrote. “She wasn’t American, but I can only imagine what she would think of Trump.”
In blasting Ivanka Trump, who served as a senior White House adviser in Trump’s first administration, another person said: “You don’t get to emulate a woman who was personally and profoundly impacted by Nazi Germany on the same day your father pardons Neo Nazis from January 6th… Their stupidity and ignorance never ceases to amaze me.”
And still another said that Hepburn’s struggles as a child and teenager was “the complete opposite of Ivanka’s silver spoon life.”