Rejected ‘SNL’ Sketch Would Have Reimagined ‘Home Alone’ with Eric Trump Left Behind
As anyone who’s ever watched Saturday Night Live’s “cut for time” sketches knows, the show inexplicably leaves some of its best ideas on the cutting room floor. Kelly Clarkson, for one, ain’t having it. In a conversation with cast member Mikey Day last week, the three-time SNL musical guest aired her biggest beef with the show: “I will say the most upsetting thing for me to watch is … all these skits get cut. And funny ones! I’m like, ‘Why did you keep that one over that one? I liked that one!’”
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Happens all the time, admitted Day, agreeing that it’s puzzling why some sketches are kept over others. Clarkson asked Day if he ever had a beloved sketch get cut and he responded with a knowing smirk — yeah, a lot of his stuff has been axed over the years. Some of his favorites never even got past the table read (where cast members read new scripts aloud to gauge reactions) to try in front of a dress rehearsal audience.
One example? “It was around Christmas time when we wrote (a sketch idea), this was years back when Trump was still president,” Day remembered. “It was a Home Alone (parody) and Eric Trump was left home alone in Trump Tower. And so, Don Jr. had to go back. ‘I gotta get back to New York, Eric’s home alone!’ There were investigators coming in in place of the burglars. All of Eric's traps didn’t work. He was like hosing down the carpet.”
Day admits to being “a little bummed” that the sketch proposal didn’t get past the first read. Clarkson, laughing hysterically at Day’s pitch, asked how in the world the sketch got cut. “Every week,” says Day, “there’s stuff.”
One theory why the bit didn’t make it past the table read? Day and Alex Moffat’s silly take on Eric and Don Jr. already had received more than its share of Saturday Night Live air time. Between March 2017 and October 2020, Day and Moffat appeared in nine sketches as the Trump siblings — other than Donald Trump himself, that ranks near the very top of SNL recurring characters in recent seasons.
Why were the characters so popular? “There’s an aura of privilege that’s ripe for parody,” Day told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018. “On a surface level, they seem like Wall Street villains, ones who would challenge the protagonist of an ‘80s movie to a ski race.”
It’s likely Eric Trump wouldn’t have appreciated the Home Alone sketch. He complained in an email to the Washington Post about Moffat’s dimwitted take: “They got it wrong, they detest us and they will do anything to try and undermine our credibility.”
“I’ve just assumed that Eric’s not a huge fan of the portrayal,” Moffat told Hollywood Reporter. “And I assume that Don Jr. is, because in his mind, it’s probably like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right. I am the smart one.’”
