Alone without a homeland?
“Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” director Chris Columbus wants Donald Trump’s cameo removed from the beloved movie but fears his director’s cut would get him deported from the US.
The filmmaker, 66, opened up about President Trump’s seven-second appearance in the 1992 movie during an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle published Monday.
The former “Apprentice” host’s cameo has “become this curse,” Columbus said.
“It’s become an albatross for me. I just wish it was gone,” he added.
“I can’t cut it. If I cut it, I’ll probably be sent out of the country,” the “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” director quipped, referring to Trump’s past remarks about mass deportations. “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.”
Columbus, born in Pennsylvania, has Italian heritage.
“Home Alone 2” follows the mischievous Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) as he mistakenly boards a flight to New York instead of Miami with the rest of the McCallister family. Deciding to make the most of the mishap, he goes to the Plaza Hotel, where he bumps into Trump. The pair share a brief exchange as Kevin asks for directions.
Trump, who owned The Plaza Hotel at the time, “bullied his way into the movie,” according to Columbus.
“We paid the fee [to film at The Plaza], but [Trump] also said, ‘The only way you can use the Plaza is if I’m in the movie,’” Columbus told Business Insider in 2020.
“So we agreed to put him in the movie, and when we screened it for the first time the oddest thing happened: People cheered when Trump showed up on screen. So I said to my editor, ‘Leave him in the movie. It’s a moment for the audience.’”
After Trump, 78, became president, “Home Alone 2” fans called for him to be removed from the movie. In 2021, Culkin voiced support to axe the cameo.
Replying to a post on X (then Twitter) that read, “petition to digitally replace trump in ‘home alone 2’ with 40-year-old macaulay culkin,” Culkin wrote simply, “Sold.”
The star, now 44, also responded “Bravo” to a post showing an edit of the scene at The Plaza with Trump replaced by empty space.
Trump, however, has a different version of events. In a 2023 post on Truth Social, the president claimed that Columbus was “begging” him to appear in “Home Alone 2.”
“I was very busy, and didn’t want to do it. They were very nice, but above all, persistent,” Trump wrote. “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!”
