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Chris Columbus, director of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), has expressed regret over Donald Trump's cameo in the film. In an interview published by the San Francisco Chronicle on April 15, 2025, he said that he would remove the scene if he could—but fears potential repercussions under Trump's presidency.
Columbus said he believes cutting the former US President out of the film could prompt a political backlash. He even joked that he could be deported as a result.
"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 told the Chronicle.
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Chris Columbus, who was born in Pennsylvania and is of Italian descent, made the comments amid renewed public attention on Trump's cameo following his re-election as US President.
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Chris Columbus explains that Donald Trump's appearance was a condition for filming at the Plaza Hotel
The scene in question features Trump interacting briefly with Macaulay Culkin's character, Kevin McCallister, in the lobby of New York's Plaza Hotel. The former president, who owned the hotel at the time, gives Kevin directions to the lobby.
Chris Columbus previously revealed that Trump's appearance wasn't originally planned but was added after the latter insisted on it as a condition for allowing the filmmakers to shoot at the location. In a December 2020 interview with Insider, Columbus explained:
"Trump said okay. 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 although the cameo wasn't initially intended to be kept in the final cut, it received an unexpectedly positive reaction during test screenings.
However, Chris Columbus has called the decision to keep it in the movie a "curse," telling the Chronicle:
"It's become this thing that I wish it was not there. It's become an albatross for me. I just wish it was gone."
Donald Trump had previously claimed that he played a key role in the film's popularity. In a 2023 Truth Social post, he wrote that the production team "begged" him to appear. Chris Columbus denied this in the San Francisco Chronicle interview, claiming:
"There's no world I would ever beg a non-actor to be in a movie."
Calls to remove Trump from the film have circulated on social media for years. According to People, in January 2021, Macaulay Culkin supported a fan's suggestion on X (formerly Twitter) to digitally remove Trump, replying "Sold" to the idea. Despite this, the version of the film with Trump's appearance continues to air regularly during the holiday season.
Home Alone 2, released in November 1992, is the sequel to the 1990 hit Home Alone and grossed over $173 million in the US. It remains one of the most-watched holiday films of all time. For now, Trump's seven-second cameo remains intact—caught between nostalgia, politics, and Hollywood legacy.
