Alec Baldwin, who hates playing President Trump on Saturday Night Live so much he once wished a meteor would crash into 30 Rock to end his misery, says he will only be doing the role a “few” more times.
On a special Sunday-night edition of The Tonight Show, Baldwin told host Jimmy Fallon that while he’s wanted to hang up the blonde wig and orange makeup for some time, the sketch comedy show’s creator Lorne Michaels convinced him to stick it out a little longer.
“I said to them, and it was not with any malice or any lack of affection for them, I said, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do that anymore, I don’t want to do the Trump thing again. I’m going to stop.’ And I don’t need to tell you about the Lorne Michaels’ Jedi Mind Trick thing,” Baldwin told SNL alum, Fallon.
“[Lorne] gets me on the phone the Friday before the show, the day before the show, and he’s like, ‘I don’t think you understand,’ and I go, ‘What don’t I understand? I’ve been thinking about it all summer. Every day I’ve been thinking about it.’ And he said, ‘I don’t think you understand how important this is,’” he continued.
“So [Lorne] said to me, ‘You should come and do it, your audience demands it’ or something like that,” Baldwin said. “So I came, and I did it. And I’m going to do it a few times.”
In June, Baldwin told USA Today that he was “so done” with the Trump impression. “I can’t imagine I would do it again,” he told the outlet. “I just can’t. They should find somebody who wants to do it,” he added, noting that he hoped to spend more time with his family and that “SNL just crushes” his weekends. He suggested former SNL impressionist extraordinaire Darrell Hammond should take over the part, saying Hammond “is a far better impressionist than I’ll ever be.”
Later, on SNL vet Kevin Nealon’s YouTube series Hiking with Kevin, Baldwin told the host that while the role was “fun” at first, he didn’t feel like it was making an impact. “I don’t think it’s doing anything. It’s not doing anything good or bad for him,” he said, referring to the president, whom he noted, “likes any attention he gets.” He later added that sometimes in the SNL dressing room he would “hope a meteor hits this building and it kills me.”
Saturday Night Live returns live on Nov. 2 with host Kristen Stewart and could feature one of Baldwin’s final appearances as the president.
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