It might feel like Donald Trump is EVERYWHERE and that people are giving him free air-time because, well, he's running for the President of the United States.

Of course, having hosted The Apprentice for several years, he's always been in the public eye. More than that, Trump was always cropping up in TV sitcoms and '90s comedy films in a cameo role.

We all remember Home Alone 2, when Trump guided Kevin McAllister to the lobby - but did you know he also turned up in Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, The Nanny, Spin City, Sex And The City AND The Drew Carey Show?

A long-running investigation by Newsweek has turned up a number of interesting - if you can call it that - anecdotes about Trump's time on television before he was talking about sexually assaulting women, banning Muslims from entering the U.S. and building walls. The overarching theme of his appearances is that he was not a natural actor, was only interested in promoting himself, wanted to seem as wealthy as possible and was, for most part, incredibly abrasive.

The creator of The Nanny tells it that Trump specifically edited his script so that he'd appear richer. Peter Marc Jacobson, who created The Nanny alongside Fran Drescher, explained to Newsweek that Trump was sent the script and "in return I got a message from casting that said, ‘Mr. Trump has a problem with the line above: “Do all you handsome millionaires know each other?”’ I was actually impressed and thought, Isn’t it nice that he’s humble and doesn’t want to call himself a millionaire?"

"Then I read the rest of the note, and it said, ‘Since he’s a billionaire, he would like the line changed accordingly.’” As it turns out, Jacobson found the note so funny that he had it kept and framed.

There was a similar story on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, when Trump apparently threw a tantrum behind the scenes. A staffer who worked on the show - and wanted to remain anonymous - said that Trump threw pages of his script at his then-wife, Marla Maples. "She started to help her pick them up and she goes, ‘I got ‘em, I got them, I'm so sorry.’ It was such a really rude thing, the way he did it. So terrible. So disrespectful... He just wasn’t pleasant."

That wasn't the only thing on Fresh Prince, either. Executive producer Gary H. Miller recalled being summoned to Trump's dressing room as he was worried about his lines not being funny.

Michael J. Fox even spoke about Donald Trump's short cameo on Spin City, saying that his "memories are not of Donald Trump's appearance on the show so much, but of how every time I've seen him since he reminds me of how good the ratings were for that episode. The funny thing is, I don't think the ratings were so good that week."

The best story, however, came from a cameo that was eventually cut from the 2010 sequel to Oliver Stone's Wall Street. Producer Eric Kopeloff explained that Trump was supposed to share a scene with Michael Douglas' character, Gordon Gekko, in a New York barbershop. Trump, of course, had a list of demands before even coming on set, which included specific ways that Trump was supposed to be filmed, including no shots of the back of his hair and a specific lighting setup to maximise his jawline and skin tone.

"We shot all these people. All these luminaries! You can look and see the movies I’ve made. All these movie actors. Never, ever, have I seen anything like this. Not from the biggest movie stars in the world! It was like you’re going back to the 1940s and getting a note from the head of the studio," explained Kopeloff.

“So the email comes in. Also, he wants his own separate monitor so he can see what he looks like right after being shot. First of all, this is an Oliver Stone movie. Second of all, it’s a movie. The movie is about Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Susan Sarandon. It’s not about Trump."

As for Trump's acting abilities, it's clear he had none. "It was awful! I'm the producer of the movie - I have the headsets on. He's awful! It's terrible! Horrible!", said Kopeloff.

"And we do it again. But after every single take, it's the same thing: ‘Wasn't that amazing? Michael, wasn't that great? It was so great! Great, great, great!’ Oliver goes, ‘Yeah, it was good. Let's try it a little bit this way. Let's try it a little bit that way.’ I think we had a couple different shots that we were gonna do, maybe different angles, maybe different jokes. But after about nine or 10 takes, I think it was very clear to all of us - and it wasn't spoken - that we were done."

As it turned out, the cameo was cut from the film as Oliver Stone found it 'distracting'. Just like Donald Trump, to be honest.

 

Via Newsweek