‘Home Alone 2’ direc­tor deems Trump’s cameo a ‘curse’ on the Christ­mas film

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‘Home Alone 2’ director deems Trump’s cameo a ‘curse’ on the Christmas film

Home Alone 2 direc­tor Chris Colum­bus lament­ed includ­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in his 1992 Christ­mas film, claim­ing it has “become this curse” in the years since its release.

Before enter­ing pol­i­tics, Trump made sev­er­al cameos in film and tele­vi­sion due to his fame in busi­ness. Home Alone 2 is one of his most well-known cameos. Reflect­ing on the cameo, which fea­tured Trump giv­ing the film’s main char­ac­ter, Kevin McCal­lis­ter, direc­tions in New York City’s Plaza Hotel, Colum­bus revealed that he orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed to scrap it for its release before see­ing audi­ence reac­tions. 

“We screened the film in Chica­go, and when that moment came onscreen, the audi­ence went crazy,” Colum­bus told the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle in a recent inter­view. “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. Years lat­er, it’s become this curse. It’s become this thing that I wish it was not there.” 

Colum­bus also said he could not remove Trump’s cameo now, as this would “prob­a­bly” send him out of the coun­try, refer­ring to Trump’s depor­ta­tions of ille­gal immi­grants. He joked about pos­si­bly mov­ing to Italy should such an occa­sion arise.

The direc­tor said in 2020 that Trump’s cameo was made after the future pres­i­dent gave the film pro­duc­tion per­mis­sion to film Home Alone 2 in the hotel Trump pur­chased in 1988 for over $407 mil­lion before sell­ing it in 1995. Trump has denied requir­ing his cameo to be filmed in the hotel, writ­ing on Truth Social in 2023 that Colum­bus and oth­ers were “beg­ging” him to make the cameo, which end­ed up tak­ing off “like a rock­et” among audi­ences.

Colum­bus said he did not beg Trump for the cameo, though he acknowl­edged, “We were des­per­ate to get the Plaza Hotel.”

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The 1992 sequel grossed almost $359 mil­lion world­wide, near­ly half of which was made in North Amer­i­ca.

In 2019, a con­tro­ver­sy was gen­er­at­ed when Trump’s cameo was among eight min­utes cut from the movie’s broad­cast by CBC, Canada’s nation­al broad­cast­er. CBC spokesman Chuck Thomp­son claimed the trimmed min­utes were to make way for adver­tise­ments and that the movie was edit­ed in 2014, a year before Trump announced his bid for office. On X, called Twit­ter at the time, the pres­i­dent react­ed to the news, writ­ing that “the movie will nev­er be the same! (just kid­ding).”