Earlier this year I interviewed a well-known British pop star who made some vaguely disparaging comments about the US president. Nothing particularly odd about that – liberal-leaning artists (i.e. most of them) have always tended to speak their minds.

But no sooner had this person’s comments filtered up the chain of command – from their publicist to their manager – than a message came back. “Probably better it’s not in the article,” said the manager, who has a decades-long reputation for not giving a fig about upsetting anyone. I obliged, largely because I found the comments tasteless and tangential to the matter in hand. Yet the incident was telling: people in the creative industries are desperate not to upset the Trump administration for fear that they’ll be denied a visa, and therefore entry, into the potentially lucrative country. And musicians, actors and writers – and their teams – are taking pre-emptive action.

My pop star’s manager is not the only one. Last month Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk – a man who in the past has appeared to criticise Trump with little prompting – was asked in a Telegraph interview about parallels between the president and one of the characters in his grizzly South Korean drama. “I have to visit the United States quite often and you know how they are getting trickier issuing their visas… So why don’t we return to this subject after [Trump] has left office?” Hwang said.

Other big names are equally aware of the situation. In March, the Liverpool-born Harry Potter and White Lotus actor Jason Isaacs said that although he has a US work visa, he was unsure whether his “clear dislike” for the president would affect his ability to work there. In general, the chorus of disapproval that stars voiced during Trump’s first term has fallen noticeably silent.