The former president and current Republican presidential candidate is no stranger to being in front of the camera. Before entering politics, he regularly appeared on television shows and in films, always playing himself and often making reference to his personal wealth.
He is technically an award-winning actor, having won three of the four Golden Raspberries he has been nominated for. Trump also served for fourteen seasons as host and co-producer of The Apprentice, a reality TV show in which people competed for a contract to promote his real estate company.
A new biopic about Trump, titled The Apprentice, recently hit theaters. Sebastian Stan plays a coiffed young Trump in 1970s New York, who works as a rent collector for his father while dreaming of opening a downtown hotel. Jeremy Strong is the Svengali-esque lawyer who takes the would-be real estate mogul under his wing and transforms him into a businessman who succeeds at all costs.
It has been well received by critics, but Trump himself is not a fan of this image. He called it a ‘disgusting hatchet’ on social media and had his lawyers send a cease and desist order to the producers after the premiere in Cannes.
Trump clearly prefers only Trump to play Trump. Here are just a few of the many films and TV shows in which he had at least a walk-on role.
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)
The year is 1992 and Donald Trump is beginning to infiltrate popular culture. After appearing in the soap opera All My Children and the TV miniseries Lady Boss, he made his most famous cameo in Home Alone 2.
The equally festive sequel to Home Alone saw Macaulay Culkin reprising his role as Kevin McCallister to continue his japes all the way to the Plaza Hotel in New York, which was owned by Trump at the time. Trump appears for a few seconds and gives Kevin directions to the lobby.
Director Chris Columbus claimed that Trump “bullied his way onto the set” by insisting that his role be shot as part of the deal to film at the hotel. Trump, of course, tells it differently. “I was very busy and didn’t want to do it,” he claimed. “They were very nice, but above all persistent.”
Fresh Prince of Bel Air (1994)
For his next appearance, Trump appeared on an episode of Will Smith’s Nineties hit, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Accompanied by his second wife Marla Maples, Trump shows up at the Banks family home and wants to buy it under the mistaken belief that it is his childhood home.
For a two-minute performance, it manages to cram in a lot of performance-enhancing remarks about Trump. The cast marvels at his supposed wealth, he offers to make a deal, and Carlton faints from excitement when he meets “The Donald.”
The Little Rascals (1994)
Trump actually had a character to sink his teeth into in the movie The Little Rascals, although the typecasting probably helped. Cast as the father of Waldo, the insufferable rich kid, he receives a call from his son during a kids’ kart race. When Waldo promises to win, Trump tells him he is “the best son money can buy.”
It’s blink and you’ll miss it, but the brick cell phones of the 1990s steal the scene.
Trump made a cameo appearance in the sitcom The Nanny, starring Fran Drescher in the title role.
Drescher has since shared a telling anecdote about comments Trump made about the script. On Seth Rogan’s podcast, she said Trump’s team insisted the phrase “You millionaires know each other” be changed to reflect the businessman’s claim to billionaire status. A compromise was reached by calling Trump the less specific “zillionaire.”
There’s a two-cell phone joke that Trump makes with the raised index number that has become one of his signature gestures.
Yes, Trump was indeed present Sex and the city. Samantha is enjoying a smart cocktail after work in episode eight of season two (The Man, the Myth, the Viagra) when Trump appears in a booth at the bar and pays by Kim Cattrall character and name who places his office in (where else) Trump Tower.
“Samantha, a cosmopolitan, and Donald Trump,” Carrie’s voiceover quivers. “You just don’t get more New York than that.”
The Plaza Hotel also makes a cameo at the end of the season, as the location for Big’s engagement party to Natasha.
At the turn of the millennium, Trump had already divorced two women and was in a relationship with the Slovenian-American model Melania Knavs. It’s the former First Lady who appears by his side in their Zoolander cameo, where they are shown on a red carpet.
The scene was filmed during an actual fashion show, where attendees were asked to improvise lines about the fictional male models. “Look, without Derek Zoolander, male modeling wouldn’t be what it is today,” Trump says.
Ben Stiller, who played Zoolander, reported that Since then, people have called for him to cut Trump’s appearance. “I’ve had people contact me and say, ‘You need to get Donald Trump out of Zoolander,’” he said. “But at the end of the day, that was a time that existed and it happened.”
Hugh Grant And Sandra Bullock star in this classic 1990s novel about an unwitting billionaire and his frustrated assistant who is forced to quit. Grant has an entire conversation with Trump in which they spar over Trump’s threats to steal his new assistant.
However, the future president did not make much of an impression on the actor. “He always wanted to be in my stuff,” Grant said on the Graham Norton Show. “But the fact is, I don’t really remember him very well.” Trump remembered clearly: He made Grant a member of his golf club, Trump National New York.
Trump’s on-screen appearance is also quite sloppy, with actress Nicole Walker begging him for a job by hinting that she would sleep with him.
Trump’s ties to WWE go back to the 1980s, when the wrestling show was held at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. Trump starred in the 23rd annual WrestleMania, billed as the “Battle of the Billionaires,” where he fought fellow businessman Vince McMahon through wrestling proxies. When Trump won, he got to shave McMahon’s head.
Trump has maintained his WWE connections since entering politics Hulk Hogan becoming one of the many celebrities supporting him as a candidate.