British actor and singer Tim Curry isn’t afraid of telling a little white lie — even to President Donald Trump’s late ex-wife Ivana during the filming of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
Curry, now 79, played the Plaza Hotel concierge in the 1992 family-comedy sequel, in which a young Kevin McCallister, played by Macaulay Culkin, finds himself alone in New York City and tricks his way into a room at the famed hotel, then owned by Donald Trump, who makes a brief cameo.
Since a significant portion of the film was shot at the hotel, the cast and crew stayed there during filming.
Speaking to The Guardian in a new career retrospective, Curry recalled having to lie to Ivana, the Plaza Hotel's president, about her interior design choices.
“She knocked on my door and said, ‘Are you happy in your room? Do you like the way it looks?’ And I loathed it actually,” he said.
He additionally recounted that at the time, Trump was eager to introduce his then-girlfriend, Marla Maples, to director Chris Columbus.
“He was very anxious to find Chris Columbus, the director,” Curry recalled. “He said: ‘I’ve got to get Marla to meet Chris Columbus because she’s a brilliant actress.’ And I thought: ‘Yeah, I’m sure.’”
Earlier this year, Columbus admitted that Trump’s cameo in the sequel has “become this curse. It’s become an albatross for me. I just wish it was gone.”
“I can’t cut it,” the filmmaker told the San Francisco Chronicle in April, quipping, “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.”
Columbus had previously claimed that Trump had “bullied his way” into making an appearance in the movie in exchange for using the Plaza Hotel.
“We paid the fee, but he also said, ‘The only way you can use the Plaza is if I’m in the movie’,” Columbus said 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.’”
Trump, however, has denied Columbus’s claims, insisting that the filmmakers were “begging” for his cameo.
“I was very busy, and didn’t want to do it. They were very nice, but above all, persistent,” he wrote on Truth Social in 2023.
“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,” he added.
“If they felt bullied, or didn’t want me, why did they put me in, and keep me there, for over 30 years?” Trump questioned. “Because I was, and still am, great for the movie, that’s why!”
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