Here are some photos of Emma Thompson at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland over the weekend. She was there to pick up the Leopard Club Award at the festival, and she also did a Q&A session which served as a career retrospective. Emma spoke about her filmography, and she also told one of her favorite stories: how Donald Trump asked her out in the 1990s. This must be one of Emma’s “party stories” – a funny/horrible story you tell at parties to amuse your hosts. She’s told variations of the story before, but she added some new details to the narrative, like Trump called her on the very day her divorce decree came through (she divorced Kenneth Branagh).

Speaking at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, Dame Emma said she was in her trailer while filming Primary Colors, the 1998 film loosely based on Bill Clinton’s journey to the White House, when the phone rang.

“It was Donald Trump,” she said. “He said: ‘Hello, this is Donald Trump.’ I thought it was a joke and asked: ‘How can I help you?’ Maybe he needed directions from someone. Then he said: ‘I’d love you to come and stay at one of my beautiful places. Maybe we could have dinner.’ I said: ‘Well, that’s very sweet. Thank you so much. I’ll get back to you.’”

Around that time, Mr Trump had just separated from his second wife, Marla Maples. Dame Emma had announced her separation from actor Kenneth Brannagh in 1995 and begun a relationship with her co-star Greg Wise, whom she later married. During the Q&A about her career at the film festival, she said she had pondered why Mr Trump contacted her at that time.

“I realised that on that day, my divorce decree had come through,” Dame Emma said. “And I bet he’s got people looking for suitable people he could take out on his arm. You know, a nice divorcee, that’s what he was looking for.”

She joked: “And he found the number in my trailer. I mean, that’s stalking.”

The actress, who has been a “life-long” member of Labour and supported Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, told the festival that, had she had a romantic relationship with Trump, she might changed the course of history.

“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,” she said.

[From The Telegraph]

Back in 2017, when I covered Emma talking about this previously, I expressed surprise that Trump would even ask out someone like Emma – intelligent, sharp-witted and attractive, but not a beauty-pageant contestant, and not someone with that glossy, fake look he seems to like. I’m still sort of surprised, but I also think he was just constantly hitting on famous women back then. Before the dementia really set in, he was fascinated by Hollywood and stardom. Most A-listers thought he was a tacky idiot. Emma certainly thought that.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.