Emma Thompson reveals Donald Trump once asked her out, and she said ‘NO’

Emma Thompson has shared a hilarious memory from the late 1990s, a time when Donald Trump unexpectedly invited her out for dinner. The Oscar-winning actress joked that if she had accepted, the course of American politics might have been very different.

The 66-year-old ‘Love Actually’ and ‘Sense and Sensibility’ star was speaking at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland when she recalled the story. It happened in 1998, while she was filming the political comedy ‘Primary Colors’, a movie loosely based on Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign.

Advertisement

“One day, the phone in my trailer rang,” Thompson said. “When I picked it up, a voice said, ‘Hi, it’s Donald Trump here.’ I honestly thought it was a prank. I said, ‘How can I help you?’ thinking he might be lost and needed directions. But instead, he said, ‘I’d love for you to stay in one of my beautiful places, and maybe we could have dinner.’”

At the time, Thompson was going through a difficult personal period. Her divorce from actor Kenneth Branagh had just been finalized, and in fact, she found out the same day Trump called.

Also Read: Tom Hanks honors Apollo 13 hero James Lovell after his death at 97

“I realised then that he must have people searching for eligible people to take out, probably divorced women,” she laughed. “He even managed to get the phone number to my trailer. That’s proper stalking! So yes, I could have gone on a date with Donald Trump. I could have changed the course of American history!”

This is not the first time Thompson has told the story. Back in 2017, she shared the same anecdote on Swedish television with host Fredrik Skavlan. At the time, Skavlan teased her by saying: “You could be the First Lady. You could have stopped him!”

Emma Thompson replied then that she had still never met Donald Trump in person.

By 2003, Thompson had moved on to a very different love story. She married actor Greg Wise, whom she met in 1995 on the set of ‘Sense and Sensibility’. The two have been together ever since.