Trump’s Cameo in ‘Home Alone 2’ Has ‘Become a Curse’

It’s been more than 30 years, but director Chris Columbus can’t shake a decision he made during the production of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. It’s that Donald Trump cameo, a few seconds of screen time that’s become “an albatross for me.”

“I can’t cut it,” Columbus told the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this year. “If I cut it, I’ll probably be sent out of the country. 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.”

If it weren’t for Trump’s celebrity, no one would miss the scene in which Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin asks a man in a long coat for directions to the lobby. “Down the hall and to the left,” says Trump in a seven-second performance that by all rights should have earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. 

For what it’s worth, the CBC did cut the cameo for Canadian broadcasts. Today reported that Trump was furious about the omission after a 2019 rerun, although the CBC insisted that it had trimmed the scene back in 2014 to make room for commercials.  

Columbus had good reason to include Trump in the original film. In addition to paying the hotel’s fee, Trump “also said, ‘The only way you can use the Plaza is if I’m in the movie.’ So we agreed to put him in the movie,” Columbus told Business Insider on the movie’s 30th anniversary.

Trump got huffy when he heard Columbus’s explanation of the cameo. “I was very busy, and didn’t want to do it,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “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. People call me whenever it is aired. Now, however, 30 years later, Columbus (what was his real name?) put out a statement that I bullied myself into the movie. Nothing could be further from the truth. That cameo helped make the movie a success. Just another Hollywood guy from the past looking for a quick fix of Trump publicity for himself!”

Tim Curry is another Home Alone 2 alum with less-than-fond memories of the Trumps. In a recent interview with the Guardian, Curry remembered Trump’s former wife, Ivanka, stopping by to ask what he thought of his room at the Plaza. (She had decorated the joint.) Curry lied and told her he liked the accommodations. “I loathed it actually,” he said.

Curry also remembered Trump bringing his then-girlfriend, Marla Maples, to the set. “He was very anxious to find Chris Columbus, the director,” Curry recalled. “He said: ‘I've got to get Marla to meet Chris Columbus because she’s a brilliant actress.’”

Curry had a skeptical response. “I thought: ‘Yeah, I’m sure.’”

Columbus wishes none of it had ever happened. “Years later, it’s become this curse. It’s become this thing that I wish it was not there,” he said. “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.”