Emma Thompson Recalls Turning Down Trump Dinner Invitation in 1998

British actress Emma Thompson told an audience at the Locarno Film Festival on 10 August that Donald Trump once invited her to dinner on the day her divorce became final in 1998, while she was filming the political satire “Primary Colors.” Thompson said the call came unexpectedly to her trailer and that Trump offered to host her at “one of his beautiful places.” The 66-year-old Oscar winner, who received Locarno’s Leopard Club Award for lifetime achievement, joked that accepting the invitation might have “changed American history.” She explained she declined the offer and has never met Trump in person. Thompson first recounted the story in 2017, but her remarks in Locarno add new detail about the timing of both her own divorce and Trump’s separation from his second wife, Marla Maples. At the time of the call, Trump was best known as a New York property developer; he was elected U.S. president two decades later.