Alec Baldwin Preparing to Retire Trump Impersonation

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NBC

Alec Baldwin says his days of playing a parody version of President Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live are numbered.

While he didn’t set a specific end date to hang up the wig and tie, the 58-year-old actor told Extra’s Mario Lopez that he wouldn’t be doing his most famous impersonation “much longer.”

“Trump just overwhelmingly lacks any sportsmanship, he remains, bitter, and angry, and you just want to look at him and go, ‘You won!’” Baldwin told Extra, saying he’d hoped the president would change once in office. “His policies aside, which you can hate, I thought he would have just relaxed.”

“The maliciousness of this White House has people worried,” he added. “That’s why I’m not going to do it much longer, the impersonation, I don’t know how much more people can take it.”

Baldwin debuted as Trump during the long-running NBC show’s 42nd season, before the presidential election, and continued to return to the role following Trump’s inauguration in January.

The show’s skits have mocked Trump’s penchant for tweeting and skewered his confrontation with the 9th Circuit Court over the halt on his executive order on immigration last month.

Offscreen, Baldwin has been a fierce critic of the president. He spoke at an anti-Trump rally outside Manhattan’s Trump Tower alongside Michael Moore and Mark Ruffalo before the inauguration, and has trolled the president on Twitter.

While Saturday Night Live enjoyed some of its highest ratings in years this season, a recent survey found that viewers have grown weary of the show’s constant assaults on Trump. A Morning Consult poll released in February found that more viewers than not would like the show to focus its attention elsewhere.

Though he may not play the president on SNL much longer, Baldwin is reportedly working on a satirical book about his time playing Trump.

 

Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum

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