Emma Thompson recently recalled an unexpected exchange she claims she had with Donald Trump.
While speaking during a masterclass at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland on Friday, August 8, Thompson alleged that Trump once asked her on a date.
“A phone rang in my trailer, and it was Donald Trump. I thought it was a joke. ‘Hi, it’s Donald Trump here,’” Thompson, 66, said. “I said, ‘How can I help you?’ I thought he needed directions. He said: ‘I would love for you to stay in one of my beautiful places, and maybe we could have dinner.”
She continued, “I realized that on that very day my divorce has finally come through. I bet he has people looking all over for suitable people he could take out, for all these nice divorcees — I mean, he found the number of my trailer! That’s stalking! So yes, I could have gone on a date with Donald Trump. I could have changed the course of American history.”
Us Weekly has reached out to the White House for comment.
The story is one Thompson first shared publicly in 2017. While speaking on the Scandinavian TV show Skavlan, the Nanny McPhee star said the invite from Trump arrived while she was filming the 1998 movie Primary Colors in Los Angeles — a role that was modeled after Trump’s political rival, former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“I didn’t know what to do with myself,” she admitted at the time. “I just said, ‘OK, well, I’ll get back to you. Thank you so much for ringing.”
Thompson wasn’t the only one fresh out of a marriage when Trump’s phone call allegedly came. The future president had just divorced his second wife Marla Maples, and had yet to meet Melania Knauss (now Trump).
Thomas separated from ex-husband and actor-director Kenneth Branagh in 1995 after discovering he had engaged in several affairs.
“I was utterly, utterly blind to the fact that he had relationships with other women on set,” she told the New Yorker in 2022. “What I learned was how easy it is to be blinded by your own desire to deceive yourself.” Branagh notably had an affair with Helena Bonham Carter, who he directed in 1994’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
“I was half alive. Any sense of being a lovable or worthy person had gone completely,” Thompson explained of discovering Branagh’s betrayal.
She went on to marry Greg Wise in 2003, whom she met in 1995 while filming Sense & Sensibility. “I’ve learned more from my second marriage just by being married,” Thompson told the outlet. “As my mother says, ‘The first 20 years are the hardest.’”
