NEED TO KNOW
- Emma Thompson has revealed that Donald Trump called to ask her out to dinner in the ’90s on the same day her divorce from ex-husband Kenneth Branagh was finalized
- “I thought it was a joke,” Thompson said at the Locarno Film Festival, joking that she “could have changed the course of American history”
- Thompson is now married to Greg Wise, whom she wed in 2003
The same day Emma Thompson received her divorce decree, she also received a call from Donald Trump, the actress says.
While speaking at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland — where she was honored for her career accomplishments with the Leopard Club Award on Friday, Aug. 8 — Thompson, 66, revealed that the now-president asked her on a date the very same day her and Kenneth Branagh’s divorce was finalized.
According to The Telegraph, the actress said she was in a trailer on the set of the 1998 dramedy Primary Colors when her phone rang, and she answered it to hear the businessman, 79, say: “Hello, this is Donald Trump.”
“I thought it was a joke and asked, ‘How can I help you?’ Maybe he needed directions from someone,” Thompson said, according to The Telegraph. “Then he said: ‘I’d love you to come and stay at one of my beautiful places. Maybe we could have dinner.’ ”
Her response, she said at the Swiss festival, was, “Well, that’s very sweet. Thank you so much. I’ll get back to you.”
The Love Actually star said she thinks Trump — who had separated from his second wife, model Marla Maples, around the same time — had members of his staff searching for someone “suitable” for him to date, according to The Telegraph.
“I realized that on that day, my divorce decree had come through. And I bet he’s got people looking for suitable people he could take out on his arm. You know, a nice divorcée, that’s what he was looking for,” she said at the film festival, where her upcoming thriller The Dead of Winter also premiered.
“And he found the number in my trailer. I mean, that’s stalking,” she added, per The Telegraph, before pondering — and joking about — what may have happened should she have accepted the dinner invitation.
Said Thompson: “I could have gone on a date with Donald Trump, and then I would have a story to tell. I could have changed the course of American history.”
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Thompson and Branagh, 64, first met on the set of the 1987 miniseries Fortunes of War, and married in 1989 before splitting six years later following the actor’s affair with another actress, Helena Bonham Carter.
The Nanny McPhee star went on to marry her current husband, Greg Wise, in 2003, years after they first met on the set of 1995’s Sense and Sensibility. The couple share two children, son Tindyebwa “Tindy” Agaba and daughter Gaia, 25, the latter of whom accompanied her mom to the Locarno Film Festival.
Trump, meanwhile, split from Maples, 61, in May 1997. He was previously married to his first wife,Ivana Trump, and later remarried, tying the knot with Melania Trump in 2005.
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