Despite playing an unlikable burglar in the cult classic series Home Alone, Daniel Stern earned some brownie points for pulling a fast one on Donald Trump.
According to Page Six, Stern reveals in his memoir, Home and Alone, that he got the ex-president to pay for $7,000 worth of drinks while filming the franchise’s second movie, 1992’s Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
Home Alone 2 was shot at Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel, which Trump owned. “Donald ended up doing a cameo, but his real contribution was letting us film there, lending the luster of the Plaza to the movie,” Stern writes. The movie’s producers requested that Stern meet with Trump because he was a “huge” fan. “He was not a great conversationalist,” Stern adds, “and kind of a nothing personality, but the meeting paid off brilliantly.”
One night, while Stern and his crew were drinking at the Plaza’s Oak Room, Trump and his late wife, Ivana Trump, stopped by. “Donald spotted us and proclaimed so everyone could hear that he would be picking up the tab at our table,” Stern says, noting that Trump seemed to relish playing the “host-with-the-most.”
Stern seized the opportunity, and he and his friends drank “until there was no more booze left in that bar,” buying rounds for everyone else in the establishment. They stayed at the bar until it closed at 4 a.m.
Stern recalls the final tab being around “at least seven thousand dollars.” He adds, “We still feel really good about that.”