- Trump did a Pizza Hut commercial in 1995 with Ivana, his ex-wife, to promote stuffed-crust pies.
- He didn't tell his new wife, Marla Maples, about the commercial until afterward.
Had it not been for Donald and Ivana Trump, his ex-wife, Pizza Hut's stuffed-crust dish may have landed in the fast-food graveyard alongside the chain's hot-dog-bites crust. Instead, a commercial featuring the divorced Trumps helped turn the cheesy crust into a multimillion-dollar business.
But the whole thing made Marla Maples sick.
"Confidence Man," a new book out Tuesday by the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, says Maples threw up when Donald Trump told her he'd filmed the commercial. She'd been married to Trump for roughly two years, and they shared a daughter, Tiffany.
At the time of the Pizza Hut commercial, Donald and Ivana Trump had finalized their divorce a few years earlier, but their postmarital sparring constantly made headlines. Ivana Trump was furious about her ex-husband's affair with Maples, and the two were known to loathe each other.
But the ex-couple came together to film a cheeky commercial. It hints at a tryst between Trump and his ex-wife, with the couple saying it's "wrong" but "feels so right." After a pause, the two whip out a pizza box and agree to "eat our pizza the wrong way," meaning crust-first.
They then poke fun at their divorce, with Ivana Trump reaching for the pizza box and asking, "May I have the last slice?"
"Actually," Donald Trump says in the commercial, "you're only entitled to half."
Donald Trump, who was 49 at the time, had filmed the Pizza Hut commercial in Trump Tower while Maples was away at Mar-a-Lago. The room where the commercial was filmed was made to look like the inside of the Plaza Hotel, "Confidence Man" says.
The day Trump filmed his commercial, he told Nick Ribis, the chief executive of the Trump casino empire at the time, and Alan Marcus, a consultant, about it, the book adds. Ribis had noticed that Trump had makeup on his face and inquired about it.
"It's really cute," Trump told Marcus and Ribis about the commercial. "It's me and Ivana. And we're sharing a pizza. I'm in black tie, she's in a gown, and we're fighting over the last piece."
Marcus tried to correct Trump, asking whether he had misspoken and had actually filmed the commercial with Maples, the book says.
Trump confirmed that he'd filmed the commercial with Ivana Trump and said Pizza Hut paid him $500,000 for the slot, it adds. He had not told Maples, and Marcus recommended he do so.
After coming clean to his wife, Trump disclosed to Marcus and Ribis that it didn't go well.
"The poor kid," he said, according to the book. "I started to tell her and she got sick. She said she had to go."
Trump's voice, the book adds, "turned to a nasal falsetto." He said Maples told him she had to "puke her fucking guts out."
Trump and Maples divorced in 1999, and in 2005, he married his current wife, Melania Trump. Ivana Trump died in July.