Which will be worse for President-elect Donald Trump: learning that Alec Baldwin intends to continue playing him on NBC’s Saturday Night Live for the foreseeable future and “dial up” his performance, or learning Baldwin gets paid just $1,400 a pop for the role of his lifetime?
Trump has not yet tweeted out any commentary on Baldwin’s interview with the New York Times, in which he remarked on playing our next POTUS.
Baldwin said he plans to continue playing Trump on SNL, as Team Trump continues to deliver SNL writers more material by the shovel-full. Today, for instance, a member of his transition team told journalists to take Trump symbolically, rather than literally.
Baldwin’s spot-on impersonation of Trump’s pouty mouth, delicate hand gestures, lumbering gait and search for the “best” words clearly is getting under the POTUS-elect’s skin, based on his Twitter response a couple of weeks ago:
All that, of course, makes Baldwin’s performance about 25% funnier.
Baldwin has promised to “dial up” the performance going forward, noting Trump’s win caught the show off-guard and that, owing to two movie commitments, those Trump performances might have to be intermittent for the time being.
Which should not be misconstrued as lack of commitment on Baldwin’s part. In the interview, he told NYT, “Wouldn’t it be great to be the person who pulls the sword out of the stone? Who gets rid of this guy? … Wouldn’t that be thrilling?”
