Tim Curry — the actor behind Dr. Frank-N-Furter, Pennywise, and a dozen other iconic roles — died Tuesday at his Los Angeles home at age 80, and the press couldn't even let a man's obituary pass without trying to score a political point.
Curry's longtime manager Marcia Hurwitz confirmed he died peacefully at his Toluca Lake residence, according to NBC News. The Daily Caller reported that police responded at 11:23 PM and foul play is not suspected. No cause of death has been disclosed. Curry had been in declining health since a massive stroke in 2012 left him paralyzed and unable to walk.
That should be the story. A legendary performer is gone. But the Mechanicsburg Patriot News led its coverage with this headline: "Tim Curry's brutal take on Trump is recalled as actor dies at age 80: 'I loathed it, actually.'" The implication is clear — Curry hated Trump. The reality is more mundane. Curry, who played the Plaza Hotel concierge in Home Alone 2, told The Guardian in 2025 that Trump possessed "the most explosive confidence that I'd ever encountered." He also recalled that Ivana Trump once asked if he liked the hotel's décor, and he said he did — before admitting to the interviewer, "I loathed it, actually." He was talking about the wallpaper. The Patriot News framed a quip about 1980s hotel interior design as a "brutal take" on a future president.
NBC, CBS, Breitbart, and the Daily Caller all published standard obituaries covering Curry's five-decade career without shoehorning in a Trump angle. CBS noted Curry's own reflection on mortality from an October interview: "I try to avoid it, as I think we all do! But I suspect that in the end, I will welcome it."
Curry's career spoke for itself. Born in Cheshire, England in 1946 to a military family, he broke out in the 1975 cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show, terrified a generation as Pennywise in Stephen King's It, and delivered standout performances in Clue, Annie, The Hunt for Red October, and Muppet Treasure Island. He suffered a debilitating stroke in 2012 that required brain surgery and left him wheelchair-bound, though he continued to make occasional appearances and released a memoir, Vagabond, last year.
The question isn't whether Curry liked Trump or the Plaza's gaudy chandeliers. It's why a local outlet decided a dead man's opinion about hotel furnishings was the most important thing to tell the public on the day he died.
