Emma Thompson details shocking timing Donald Trump asked her out

Emma Thompson believes she could've "changed the course of American history" if she'd agreed to go out on a date with now-US President Donald Trump nearly 25 years ago.

The British actress was speaking at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland on Friday when she made the unexpected remarks.

Thompson, who has been married to Grey Wise since 2003, recalled an interaction with Trump over a call when she was in a trailer on the set of the 1998 dramedy Primary Colors.

“Hello, this is Donald Trump,” the actress mimicked the businessman-turned-politician, continuing their first-ever conversation, “Then he said, ‘I’d love you to come and stay at one of my beautiful places. Maybe we could have dinner.’”

The Love Actually star confessed she couldn't believe it as the call coincided with the day her divorce from Kenneth Branagh got finalised.

“I thought it was a joke," she recalled, admitting that her first concern was ‘How can I help you?’ before Trump asked her out.

"Maybe he needed directions from someone,” she joked at the Swiss festival, where she was being honoured with the Leopard Club Award on the same day her upcoming thriller, The Dead of Winter, premiered. 

However, she remembers hanging up the call with a polite acknowledgement. “Well, that’s very sweet. Thank you so much. I’ll get back to you,” Thompson, 66, recalled telling Trump, now 79.

She suspects Trump—who had recently separated from his second wife, Marla Maples, at the time—may have had staff seeking “a nice divorcée” to date. “And he found the number in my trailer. I mean, that’s stalking,” she said with a laugh.

The Sense and Sensibility star also mused about what might have happened if she had 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.”

She now shares two children, son Tindyebwa "Tindy" Agaba and daughter Gaia, 25, with her current husband, Wise.