Mark Ruffalo calls for 'even worse' unseen footage of Donald Trump on The Apprentice to be released

Mounting pressure to release further footage follows the recently leaked videos in which the Republican can be heard boasting about groping and making unwanted advances on women

It has now been rumoured things may get even worse for Mr Trump since the leak (Rex Features)

Mark Ruffalo has called for further damning footage of Donald Trump to be released following the recent leak of his lewd and sexually aggressive comments.

The Spotlight actor and activist shared a petition calling on NBC and MGM to release additional footage of the Republican presidential candidate allegedly saying “sexually predatory and extremely racist things” while he was presenter of The Apprentice.

NBC is the channel which the show appeared on while MGM is thought to own the rights to the show.

“Tell @NBC and MGM: Release the Trump tapes http://petitions.moveon.org/s/8HQl9S @moveon @UltraViolet,” Ruffalo tweeted.

The pressure to release further footage follows the recently leaked videos, obtained by The Washington Post, in which Mr Trump can be heard bragging about groping and making unwanted advances on women back in 2005. The billionaire boasted that he was such a “star” he can grab women “by the p***y”.

The Republican party has been thrown into disarray since the obscene comments, which he has since apologised for, were leaked. Dozens of senior Republicans have withdrawn their support for Mr Trump and some have even called for him to resign.

But it has now been rumoured things may get even worse for Mr Trump since the leak. Bill Pruitt, a producer on the first two seasons of The Apprentice, the NBC reality show Mr Trump hosted between 2004 and 2015 said there are “far worse” unseen behind-the-scenes tapes of Mr Trump during his time on the program.

Emmy-award winning Irish-American children's television producer, Chris Nee, claimed she was made to sign a contract with Mark Burnett, the creator of The Apprentice, which included a $5 million penalty if anything was “leaked”. She also claimed she had been “hearing from producers/crew N word is the ‘much worse’” in tweets which have since been deleted from her account.

Despite mounting pressure for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios and Mr Burnett to make the footage public, MGM and Burnett said in a joint statement they do “not have the ability nor the right” to release the material.

“Despite reports to the contrary, Mark Burnett does not have the ability nor the right to release footage or other material from The Apprentice,” they said in a statement sent to Variety on Monday. “Various contractual and legal requirements also restrict MGM's ability to release such material.”

“The recent claims that Mark Burnett has threatened anyone with litigation if they were to leak such material are completely and unequivocally false. To be clear, as previously reported in the press, which Mark Burnett has confirmed, he has consistently supported Democratic campaigns.”

UltraViolet Action, an organisation which works to “fight sexism and expand women’s rights”, posted a petition, which garnered 30,000 signatures in the space of hours, calling on MGM and NBC to release the tapes and “stop protecting Donald Trump”.

Mr Trump has hinted at the possibility of more tapes being released but not provided any detail about what the tapes might contain. Speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania, he said: “If they want to release more tapes saying inappropriate things, we'll continue to talk about Bill and Hillary Clinton doing inappropriate things. There are so many of them.”

The Independent contacted a representative of Ruffalo for comment.