Donald Trump Asked This Actress Out The Same Day As Her Divorce originally appeared on Parade.
Emma Thompson says an unexpected phone call from Donald Trump arrived at a very unusual moment in her life — the exact day her divorce was finalized.
While attending the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland on Friday, August 8, the 66-year-old actress recounted the surprising exchange. According to The Telegraph, Thompson was on the set of the 1998 political dramedy Primary Colors when her phone rang, and the voice on the other end introduced himself as the New York real estate mogul.
“I thought it was a joke and asked, ‘How can I help you?’ Maybe he needed directions from someone,” she said. “Then he said: ‘I’d love you to come and stay at one of my beautiful places. Maybe we could have dinner.’”
Her polite reply at the time was, “Well, that’s very sweet. Thank you so much. I’ll get back to you.”
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Thompson suggested Trump’s timing wasn’t a coincidence, noting that her divorce from Kenneth Branagh had just been finalized, and Trump had recently split from his second wife, Marla Maples. “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. “And he found the number in my trailer. I mean, that’s stalking.”
The Love Actually star joked about how history might have changed if she’d accepted. “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.”
Thompson and Branagh wed in 1989 after meeting on the set of Fortunes of War and split in 1995. She later married actor Greg Wise in 2003, and the couple share two children. Trump divorced Maples in 1997 before marrying Melania Trump in 2005.
Donald Trump Asked This Actress Out The Same Day As Her Divorce first appeared on Parade on Aug 10, 2025
This story was originally reported by Parade on Aug 10, 2025, where it first appeared.
