Home Alone Director Says Trump Cameo Has Become ‘This Curse’: ‘If I Cut It, I’d Probably Be’ Deported
Screenshot via Home Alone 2
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York director Chris Columbus admitted President Donald Trump’s cameo in his 1992 movie has become a “curse” and “albatross.”
Home Alone 2 features Trump as himself, giving directions to the movie’s protagonist, Kevin McCallister (played by Macaulay Culkin) in New York’s Plaza Hotel, which was owned by Trump at the time.
Trump and Columbus have shared different accounts of the story behind his cameo over the years, with Trump claiming the filmmakers begged him to be in the film, while Columbus has maintained the Trump cameo was in exchange for using the Plaza Hotel.
“It’s become this curse,” Columbus told the San Francisco Chronicle this week. “It’s become this thing that I wish it was not there.”
The director pushed back on the president’s 2023 claim that producers pushed for him to be in the film rather than the other way around.
“What’s going through this guy’s mind? He said I was lying. I’m not lying. He said I begged him to be in the movie, but there’s no world I would ever beg a non-actor to be in a movie. But we were desperate to get the Plaza Hotel,” he said.
Trump claimed in 2023 posts on Truth Social that he was “busy” and did not want to film the Home Alone part.
“Director Chris Columbus, and others, were begging me to make a cameo appearance in Home Alone 2. They rented the Plaza Hotel in New York, which I owned at the time. I was very busy, and didn’t want to do it. They were very nice, but above all, persistent. I agreed, and the rest is history! That little cameo took off like a rocket, and the movie was a big success, and still is, especially around Christmas time,” he wrote.
Columbus admitted that Trump’s cameo went over incredibly well in early screenings of the film.
“They cheered and they cheered and they thought it was hilarious. I think I know a lot about comedy, but I don’t, obviously, because I never thought that was going to be considered hilarious,” he said about a Chicago screening.
The director joked that he’d like to cut the scene altogether, but he’d likely end up being part of the administration’s mass deportation efforts.
“If I cut it, I’ll probably be sent out of the country,” Columbus said. “I’ll be considered sort of not fit to live in the United States, so I’ll have to go back to Italy or something.”
