Two-time Oscar-winner Emma Thompson wasn’t feeling anything near love actually when Donald Trump asked her out to dinner back in the day.
The “Howards End” star said Saturday at the Locarno Film Festival that the future two-time president called her in her trailer while she was filming the 1998 political movie “Primary Colors.” It was also the day her divorce from actor Kenneth Branagh was finalized.
“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,’” she told the audience, per the Telegraph. “I said: ‘Well, that’s very sweet. Thank you so much. I’ll get back to you.’”
Thompson, who received a career award and premiered her latest movie at the festival, “The Dead of Winter,” concluded Trump was “stalking” her.
“I realized that on that day, my divorce, my divorce decree, you know, the final papers of my divorce had come through,” she said, per The Hollywood Reporter. “And I thought, 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, and he found the number in my trailer. I mean, that’s stalking!”
While she may have shown sense and sensibility in rejecting Trump, who’s had a troubling history with women, she comically saw a lost opportunity.
“I could have gone on a date with Donald Trump, and then I would have a story to tell,” she said, per THR. “I could have changed the course of American history.”
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HuffPost reached out to the White House for comment.