Home Alone 2: Lost in New York director Chris Columbus has made a brutal admission about Donald Trump’s cameo in the hit movie.
In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Columbus claims the cameo from the 1992 family favorite has haunted him since.
The 66-year-old even called the on screen moment an “albatross” and even admitted; “I just wish it was gone.”
The scene, which last seven seconds, sees Trump giving Macaulay Culkin’s character, Kevin, directions while in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel – which Trump owned at the time of filming.
Columbus has revealed that the cameo was actually Trump’s idea – that if they wanted to film in the Plaza, Trump reportedly demanded he have a scene.
In an interview with Business Insider in 2020, Columbus said: “We paid the fee, but he 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,”.
He added that his plan was to remove the scene but test audiences seemed to find the cameo “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,” Columbus shared.
Trump, however, has claimed that’s not how things went down.
In 2023, on Truth Social, the 78-year-old claimed Columbus “begged” him to be in the movie. “I was very busy, and didn’t want to do it,” Trump wrote. “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… Just another Hollywood guy from the past looking for a quick fix of Trump publicity for himself!”
Columbus has since responded to these claims: “He said I was lying. I’m not lying,” he shared. “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.”
Matt Damon also backed up Columbus in an interview in 2017, sharing that “The deal was that if you wanted to shoot in one of [Trump’s] buildings, you had to write him in a part.” – referring to his cameo in Scent of A Woman, which was cut.
