Actor Macaulay Culkin approved calls from fans to remove President Donald Trump’s cameo from the 1992 classic “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.”
Responding Wednesday to a Twitter user who floated the idea of replacing Trump with a 40-year-old version of Culkin, the former child star responded, “Sold.”
Sold.
— Macaulay Culkin (@IncredibleCulk) January 13, 2021
Culkin later applauded another Twitter user who expunged Trump from the footage, writing simply, “Bravo.”
Bravo.
— Macaulay Culkin (@IncredibleCulk) January 13, 2021
Other users offered suggestions regarding who could replace Trump, such as Darth Vader and Christopher Plummer, who replaced disgraced actor Kevin Spacey in “All the Money in the World.”
'Home Alone 2' is trending as fans offer suggestions as to who should replace that Trump cameo: pic.twitter.com/F3ECMbq5FB
— Ryan Parker (@TheRyanParker) January 9, 2021
Trump appears for a brief moment in the movie when Kevin McAlister, played by Culkin, asks him for directions to the lobby. Altogether, Trump’s appearances span 13 films and even more television shows, such as “The Little Rascals,” “Zoolander,” “Sex and the City,” and “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”
The film’s director, Chris Columbus, revealed in a December 2020 interview with Insider that Trump had demanded a cameo in exchange for the movie’s use of the Plaza Hotel, which he then owned. “Like most locations in New York City, you just pay a fee and you are allowed to shoot in that location,” Columbus remembered. “We approached The Plaza Hotel, which Trump owned at the time because we wanted to shoot in the lobby. We couldn’t rebuild The Plaza on a soundstage.”
“Trump said OK,” Columbus continued. “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, 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.’ But he did bully his way into the movie.”
The Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) has been cutting the Trump scene in “Home Alone 2” for years, though the CBC has explained it was doing so to make room for commercials, even before he was in the White House.
“As is often the case with feature films adapted for television, Home Alone 2 was edited for time,” the CBC told The Hollywood Reporter. “The scene with Donald Trump was one of several that were cut from the movie as none of them were integral to the plot. These edits were done in 2014 when we first acquired the film and before Mr. Trump was elected President.”
Trump nevertheless called out Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the cut in 2019, tweeting, “I guess Justin T doesn’t much like my making him pay up on NATO or Trade!”
Donald Trump Jr. tweeted an article at the time titled “Pathetic: Canada’s CBC under fire when Trump’s cameo in ‘Home Alone 2’ disappears from Christmas broadcast.”