Director Chris Columbus has said he fears Donald Trump’s administration would deport him if he cut the president’s cameo from his film, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
Released in 1992, the comedy sequel tells the story of eight-year-old boy Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin), who accidentally boards a flight to New York instead of Miami, where his family are spending the Christmas holidays.
After landing in New York, Kevin makes his way to the five-star Plaza Hotel. There, Culkin’s character bumps into Trump, who owned the Plaza at the time, and asks him for directions to the lobby.
Speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle, Columbus said of Trump’s cameo: “It’s become this curse. It’s become an albatross for me. I just wish it was gone.”
Although the filmmaker was born and raised in the United States, he has Italian ancestry and admitted he would be worried he would “have to go back to Italy or something” if he nixed the scene.
“I can’t cut it,” Columbus added. “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.”
Trump’s cameo has been removed from Home Alone 2 before. Back in 2019, Trump supporters complained after a cut of the film without the president was aired on a Canadian channel.
Additionally, in 2021, Culkin said on social media he was “sold” on the idea of digitally replacing Trump in the film.
A year earlier, Columbus had revealed that Trump had “bullied his way into the movie” while they were filming in his 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. “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.’”
Columbus’ fears of deportation come after Trump’s administration deported a man living in Maryland to a mega-prison in El Salvador in what they have since claimed was an “administration error”.
When questioned about the incident by CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, the president repeatedly attacked the reporter claiming her network “hates our country” and personally insulting her as “low-rated”.
After a judge ordered earlier this month that Abrego Garcia — who is married to an American citizen and has no criminal record — must be returned, calling his removal “unconstitutional,” the Supreme Court ruled that the administration must “facilitate” Garcia’s release from the prison — adding that his removal from the United States was “illegal.”
