“Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” director Chris Columbus now considers President Donald Trump’s famous cameo in the film a “curse” and “albatross” around his neck.
The 1992 film featured a brief cameo by the then-real estate mogul as himself giving directions to the movie’s main character, Kevin McCallister, played by Macaulay Culkin, at New York’s Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time.
Though the appearance is considered an iconic moment in the film, Columbus told the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday that he now wishes it was gone.
“Years later, it’s become this curse,” Columbus said. “It’s become this thing that I wish it was not there.”
Columbus told Business Insider in 2020 that Trump “bull[ied] his way” into the film by saying, “The only way you can use the Plaza is if I’m in the movie.”
In 2023, however, Trump claimed in a social media post that the filmmaker begged for his cameo, which Columbus now disputes.
“What’s going through this guy’s mind? 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,” Columbus SF Chronicle. “But we were desperate to get the Plaza Hotel.”
He continued, “But it’s [the cameo] there. It’s become an albatross for me. I just wish it was gone.”
Columbus said he was surprised at how popular the cameo was, particularly during one of the film’s early screenings.
“We screened the film in Chicago, and when that moment came onscreen the audience went crazy,” Columbus said. “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.”
Columbus jokingly added that he can’t cut the cameo now out of fear of being deported, despite being an American citizen.
“I can’t 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.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment.
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