In the wake and after the US election, where Donald Trump won his second term, many celebrities have promised they are going to leave the country under the Republican administration.
1. Who promised to leave?
While Elon Musk was one of the driving forces behind the President-elect’s campaign and was also promised a central, yet to be determined, role in the upcoming Administration, his trans daughter, Vivian Wilson, said she has no future in the US. “I’ve thought this for a while, but yesterday confirmed it for me. I don’t see my future being in the United States”, she wrote in a post on Threads. Even if [Trump is] only in office for four years, even if the anti-trans regulations magically don’t happen, the people who willingly voted this in are not going anywhere anytime soon.” Meanwhile, Musk keeps referring to Vivian, who took her mother’s maiden name Wilson, as his son, saying in the past that “woke mind virus killed my son”.
Other members of the LGBTQ+ community preparing to leave are singer and actress Raven-Symoné and her wife Miranda Maday, who are considering a move to Canada. “My confession for this election is if any Republican gets nominated, I’m going to move to Canada with my entire family”, Raven said before the results of the elections. “I already have my ticket. I literally bought my ticket, I swear.”
A vocal supporter for the community throughout her career, pop music legend Cher has also indicated she’s thinking about moving abroad. “I almost got an ulcer the last time. If he gets in, who knows? This time I will leave [the country] for good”, she said before the elections. “It’s something like 500 bills they’re trying to pass”, Cher later said about the anti-trans movement. “I was with two trans girls the other night – and, of course, my own child [Chaz is trans]. I was saying, ‘We’ve got to stand together.’ I don’t know what their eventual plan is for trans people. I don’t put anything past them.”
America Ferrera is reportedly looking at schools in London for her two children. “America is sick that Donald Trump is president again. She is devastated that Kamala lost. She thought the country she lived in was better than that”, one insider told Daily Mail.
Sharon Stone also said before the elections she was considering getting a house in Italy. “I think that’s an intelligent construct at this time. This is one of the first times in my life that I’ve actually seen anyone running for office on a platform of hate and oppression”, she told the Daily Mail in July.
Also looking for a house in Europe are Prince Harry and Meghan Markle who reportedly bought a $4.7 million villa 130 km south of Lisbon. Although no statement was made by the couple on their latest purchase, the timing of the investment matches the elections.
Richard Gere has recently doubled down on previous promised he would move to Spain with his wife. Not mentioning Trump while on “The Tonight Show” with Jimmy Fallon, 1999’s “Sexiest Man Alive” said that after almost 7 years his Spanish wife spent in the US, it is fair now for him to move to her country at least for the same amount of time, which he said would also allow their two bilingual children to flourish. Gere had been talking about the move before Trump’s re-election, telling Vanity Fair Spain in April that his wife “was very generous in giving me six years living in my world, so it is only fair that I give her at least another six living in hers.”
Other celebrities saying they would move under a Trump administrations include Eva Longoria, who said she would spend her time in Spain and Mexico because the “country is becoming dystopian”. Laverne Cox said she would probably move to Europe or the Caribbean, while Barbra Streisand’s choice would be England because she “can’t live here under an administration like that”.
2. All bark, no bite?
Whoopi Goldberg has also repeatedly dropped hints on her show about moving, saying “Maybe it’s time for me to move, you know. I can afford to go. However, the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) winner made a similar promise in 2016, which in the end did not come to fruition, leading to Trump mocking her online at the time: “Canada doesn’t want you Whoopi, NOBODY DOES!”
Along with Goldberg, other celebrities that promised to leave the country in 2016 but ended up staying include Miley Cyrus, Amy Schumer, George Lopez, Bryan Cranston, Lena Dunham and Samuel L Jackson. “Every four years, you hear the same recycled rhetoric from celebrities. It’s become a running joke at this point. It’s ‘all talk, no walk’”, Doug Eldridge, founder of Achilles PR, told Fox News Digital about all the unfulfilled warnings.
3. Who already left?
Only two celebrities seem to have actually left the US so far, but they both have underlying personal reasons for moving abroad.
After 7 years living in the States, GOT actress Sophie Turner has just moved back to the UK after the divorce from Joe Jonas. Besides the separation, Turner told Harper’s Bazaar she never quite felt at home in the US and was already thinking about leaving long before the election. “The gun violence, Roe v Wade being overturned… Everything just kind of piled on. After the Uvalde [school] shooting, I knew it was time to get the fuck out of there”, she told the magazine.
Ellen DeGeneres has also recently moved to the UK with her wife Portia de Rossi. Relocating to the Cotswolds, a region of central Southwest England, they have reportedly told friends Trump’s win was the primary reason for the move. However, DeGeneres was asked to leave her talk show in 2022 after running it for almost 19 years, following claims of a toxic workplace. In a recently released Netflix stand-up special, DeGeneres says that after getting “kicked out of show business”, she “took up gardening” and “got chickens”. Considering this and the fact that the couple have already relocated to the UK and that a move over the pond takes more planning than 3 weeks, moving (far) away from the show business capital of the world was probably already in the works.
