Filmmaker Chris Columbus admitted that Donald Trump’s cameo in Home Alone 2 has become a great burden for his legacy, yet he can’t remove it from the movie all these years later. In a recent interview with The San Francisco Chronicle, Columbus said that he feared some kind of retaliation from Trump or even deportation if he tried to alter the film — though he was being sarcastic, at least to some extent. Trump makes a brief appearance in the 1992 movie while Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) is at the Plaza Hotel, which Trump owned at the time, but in 2020, Columbus revealed that Trump actually requested that cameo as a condition for filming on his property. The director is now clearly wondering if it was worth the price.
Videos by ComicBook.com
“I cant cut it,” Columbus said. “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.” The interviewer believed Columbus was being sardonic here, noting that he was born and raised in the U.S., and his Irish heritage is distant. Still, the Trump administration’s rapidly-changing immigration policies make it hard to be sure.
Columbus said that the cameo has become “an albatross for me,” and he “wishes it was gone.” Other films have been altered for re-release, especially in the streaming era, but Columbus believes this kind of change would be too much. It’s clear that Trump would feel strongly about it too, as he previously disputed Columbus’ account of how the cameo came to be.
[RELATED: Home Alone Director Chris Columbus Has Made More Christmas Movies Than You Think]
Back in 2020, Columbus told Business Insider that Trump demanded to appear in Home Alone 2 as part of their agreement to film there. The production also had to pay a large but standard fee for use of the premises, but the cameo was a bit more unusual. It wasn’t until three years later that Trump responded in posts on his Truth Social website, claiming that Columbus was “begging” him to appear in the movie. He also claimed that the movie would not have been successful without him.
Columbus finally responded to those posts in his new interview with The Chronicle. “What’s going through this guy’s mind?” the director wondered. “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.”
In 1992, Trump had limited notoriety in the media, though he was known to some New Yorkers for his flamboyant style and his large-scale, heavily-branded real estate projects — most notably Trump Tower. He had not yet taken to reality TV, where he eventually became a household name. Trump acquired the iconic Plaza Hotel in 1988 with a massive loan from a consortium of 16 different banks. He filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the hotel in 1992, after Home Alone 2 had filmed there.
