The Daily Beast Podcast - Alec Baldwin: Here’s Why I Won’t Run for Office (Yet)

Episode Date: November 29, 2020

Alec Baldwin has given serious thought about running for office. He already knows what it’s like for people to hate his guts (Like for things like playing the president on Saturday Night Live—“They say things like, ‘I don't know who we want to get rid of first Alec Baldwin or Trump.’”) But seriously, he has considered diving head-first into the political world, and there is a chance he still might, but there’s a few things he’d need to take care of first—and someone he’d have to convince. In this episode of The New Abnormal, the 30 Rock actor tells Molly-Jong about his wife’s opinion on the matter, and why he credits his dad for standing “on the right side” of politics these days, according to Molly. After all, out of all the Baldwins in the family, there is only one Trump supporter. “[My dad] was a very progressive guy. He was very, very humanistic, very, and he would always say things to me,” he said. “My father was somebody that kind of understood that if we give people equal rights, it's going to, I don't want to say infiltrate, but pervade through every part of our society. And that's the change.” Baldwin was actually planning on leaving the country if Trump won re-election, but now he’s thinking about still going anyway. (“We still think it's a great time to get the hell out of here.”) In the meantime, he has all eyes on 2022—and a fantasy about being appointed the ambassador to Spain. Baldwin also reveals how much he prepared for impersonating Trump on SNL, and the reason Donald rants for so long at rallies. Plus! Listen closely, there’s a moment when he and Molly are almost the victims of a horror movie that only parents would find scary. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alec Baldwin is an actor known for his roles in 30 Rock, Glenn Gary Gunn Ross, and of course, for playing Donald Trump on Saturday at Live, as well as his philanthropy and political work. What is it going to be like not to play Trump anymore? Oh, God, don't say that. Will you always play Trump? I feel like you're a doctor with a Woody Allen movie. You have my ex-playing up against the screen, you know, and you're like, oh, I got bad news for you. Albu of cancer. Well, I think that, you know, we did it and we rode that into the ground, but it was necessary

because as much as there's been rounds of people criticizing me for not doing a very specific Trump impersonation. Wait, why? Well, there was a large number of people who watched the show and watched the Plus 7 show online and watched clips and things like that. I mean, S&L is sliced and diced and reserved over the week like any other show, especially those shows that have little segments like that, where you can post them online, like Fallon and so forth. All those comedy shows, they can repurpose them online. And we've had great success with the numbers for the show, very good success.

And then there's been people who are, I'm trying to think of the best word. I'm the kindest word. or to describe people who are really hate my guts. And they say things, I don't know who we want to get rid of first, Alec Baldwin or Trump. But you understand that people are, you know, if I'm 30 years old, let's say I was 30.

So that's 1988, I was 30. I'm 62 now. And if you went back 30 years from there, then the comedy icons that were, or comedy names, I shouldn't say icons, but the comedy names that were evolving were like, you know, to people now, I'm like Jerry Lewis to them. You know what I mean? You were not that all.

I'm like Sid Caesar. I'm from another generation so far back. I mean, to me, I'm like Bob Hope or something. I'm like the selfishly douchebag that they hate and just want to get rid of. For that reason alone, I'm glad to just to give them a little gift, I'm going to just to give them a little gift. glad you know what's funny is I think every time I hear a Trump impersonation I think oh that person is impersonating Alec Baldwin doing Trump But you know something the cold opening of the show needs to be a brisk, well-paced, it's a sketch that's five minutes or less And this is a horrible analogy, a horrible metaphor, but you got to give that horse the stick all the way to the finish line.

You cannot take any unearned pauses. You got to move it's brassy and loud. And Brendan Gleason comes along. to do his Trump thing and the thing with Jeff Daniels, which was fantastic. And I was really very admiring of that. But that's another animal. We, in the cold opening, I mean, decision I made was faster, was better. The Trump that I would do talked faster. He was more, you know, kind of monochromatic. I mean, I gave Trump the amount of investigation and the amount of research I thought he deserved, which wasn't very much. So it just was something to come off of where I would often say to them, I would give them notes early on in the first season and the second season to inch us, and that is the word to inch us closer to some writing, where I could do a better Trump impersonation. You know, because there's Trump publicly, there's Trump at the podium at a rally, and then there's Trump privately when he's talking to Leslie Stahl and about to walk out of a 60-minute interview.

He's kind of hushed and intimate and like he's in the confessional. It's a very quiet thing. The other one, at the rally, you can tell he's very, you know, Sleepy Joe, what do we, what can we say? What can we say? It's very sing-songy. Yeah. He's not a good performer. He's actually a dreadful performer. So a lot of what he does is filler that's killing time until he thinks of the next idea. Yeah. So he repeats himself a lot and he has got a lot of vocalizing he does to stall and buy time before he comes up with his next mediocre idea. I mean, it's interesting because you have played a lot of powerful characters in one way or another. One of our obsessions during quarantine is my kids and I have watched 30 rock, like 50 times.

And that character is an amazing character. I always use the same quote. You know, Roger Daltrey once said, no one writes rock songs like Pete Townsend and no one sings Pete songs like I do. There was a singer-songwriter battery there and Tina and Robert and all of their staff. I mean, the whole couple dozen people that were in and out of that, Paul Pell, Vali, Chandra Shakin, and all the people that were writers, Jack Birdett, John Bejee, all the people that were working with Tina and Robert over those seven seasons. They're the funniest writers I ever met in my life, and I just had to just say it. You know, I would just turn to Tina and I would go, what was the scene where Carrie Fisher walks out of my office? Oh, yeah.

And I turn to Tina when the doors closed, and I say, don't ever ask me to speak to a woman that age again. And all I had to do was just say it. Just don't put anything on it. You know, just say it. And the writing was funny. I mean, and I don't consider myself to be that funny. But they wrote a lot of funny stuff. So it was great.

You are funny, though. But I know what you, I, it's relative. She's a genius in that way. She's a genius. Yeah, she is. With that, you played now two kind of really deep, conservative people in the whole trumpet. I think of like a 30 rock You're talking about like the sixth sigma trade

I had to sit through one of those things And when you did that It was like It shook me to my core How much you embodied that And But did you learn any interesting personality lessons From like what you had to research

On that role? Well I think whenever you play a character And you revisit it again and again It does get into your blood a little bit So like if you do a movie And you're in and out of those scenes and when I used to make mostly films and act in films, those experiences were, you know,

they could be as short as five or six weeks. They could be 10 or 12 weeks. They could be some monolith, it was like 18 weeks or something. We did cat in the hat for like five months. Because Mike Myers was in the chair for like six hours, so we only had to shoot five hours or whatever. So it was a very, very crazy schedule.

But my point is that when you do a play and you're doing that character again and again, And when you do a TV show and you do it for years, the character does tend to inhabit some of your life. So I would be in a restaurant and I would get a little Donagie going every now and them. Like I'd look at somebody and say, does that glass look clean to you? Does that glass look clean to you?

You know, I would just, I just was appalled at any mediocre service or mediocre effort. You know, you give it your all or you've got to get written up on the report. And so, you know, I played that part. Yeah, it definitely got into my life a little bit. I'm glad you lost the accent, though, from outside providence. Yes, yes, yes. One of the things that I think has been really cool about you is you have been really on the right side of things politically. And so has your almost your entire family.

Can you explain how you guys leaving one person out, obviously, I will not bring that up. I don't want to be sensitive. No, you can talk about him. He brought it on himself. How did that happen? How did you guys all, can you talk about that a little bit? Well, you know, my dad was a school teacher who had one year of law school. He went to S.U. Law School.

And he was one of these guys where my mother's father, my mother grew up and she didn't have a lot of money. They weren't rich, but they lived very well. And her father was a very successful guy. And both sets of my grandparents, both graduated. SU. And both my parents, my parents met at Eschew and my mother's family is from Syracuse. And so when my dad was going to school for a year, his father-in-law, my mother's father was paying for it. And he kind of got

a little freaked out about it. He didn't want to be depending on somebody like that. His pride got in the way. So he left after a year. He went down to Long Island where he got a job as a teacher in a school district there where he taught his whole life. And he taught what they used to call social studies, you know, history, economics, what have you, contemporary problems was a course he taught, and different things like that. And he was a very progressive guy. He was a very, very humanistic, very, you know, he would always say things to me.

And I've said this in interviews before. He said to me once when I was a kid, he said, you think if you were black, you would be Martin Luther King and you'd be pursuing the path of nonviolent resistance and or would you be more like Eldridge Cleaver and you'd be like throwing some elbows here. And there was a long pause and my father said, I thought so. You know, if he were alive today, where we've arrived in our society today, where people are going to have to start to embrace the notion in this country, in this country, that just as they announced in New York probably 10 years ago, they had the census and they said that whites in the five boroughs were the plurality, but no longer the majority. A city of New York was 49% at that time white and 51% people of

color and Asian and so forth, Hispanic. And that's what's going to happen in this country. I mean, eventually white privilege, and as it's expressed through presidents throughout our life with one exception, but names like, you know, Carter and Reagan and Ford and whitey, white, white people run in the show with the exception of Obama, you see that that's going to change. And my father was somebody that kind of understood that, you know, that if we give people equal rights, it's going to, I don't want to say infiltrate, but pervade through every part of our society. And that's the change I think we see coming now as more and more people of color. They want to seat at the table of power and they want to call the shots. So what are you working on now?

Can you tell us a little bit? Doing a TV streaming series for Peacock Streaming that's being produced by Universal called Dr. Death, which this woman, Laura Beale, who's a writer in the Dallas area, covered this for, I think, she covered it for the local paper. She wrote and produced

and was the star, the voice of her own podcast. called Dr. Death in an eight-part series about this guy, Christopher Dunch, who is serving a life sentence in prison for all of his botched medical care. He killed two people. He crippled four people. He crippled his best friend.

He did a lot of... And Joshua Jackson is playing Dunch. He's the lead. And I play a doctor who brings him to justice, so to speak. Do you think y'all do more comedy because I find you hilarious? No!

Why? Well, we announced on Monday that we picked up this show. we've been developing a show for quite a while. We spent a lot of time. I mean, like this ungodly amount of time producing this thing, a sitcom. They just announced that ABC picked up this four-camera sitcom

for me and Kelsey Grammer. So Kelsey... Oh, yes! Kelsey and I are going to do a show where we're two old friends who are our nemesis as well. We have a kind of on-again, off-again, friendship, and we get reunited. And there's a third character there.

There's a third friend. We all meet at some guy's funeral. We all come together at a funeral. And at that funeral, the three of us decide that we need to be back in each other's lives more. And we take it from there. But it's a really, it's Chris Lloyd, who did mother family and who did Frazier with Kelsey. We start shooting that at the end of February in L.A. That is so cool.

I'm going to have to walk to L.A. though, because of COVID, double six. Yeah, how are you going to get to L.A.? And also, do you have many dogs and kids? We have a guy that we can board the dogs with whom to go away. You can board the kids. I want to board the kids. I wonder if you'll take the kids, too. They fly us out there on a private plane because of the COVID.

Yeah. I'm not opposed to flying commercially. It doesn't really bother me. But what's happened is with the COVID, it's like, I haven't flown at all. And if I did, everything was like someone's going to give me a private plane to keep away from the whole airport thing. It's tough. I don't mind flying commercially. But with my wife and all my kids, we have to try to book the whole first class.

You have a lot of kids. It's a little tough. That's tough. You have, though, been very much politically involved and also on the right side of things. Do you, will you do more of that, do you say? Well, I think that for me, it's a question of time because my age, you know, like, if you honestly asked me 12 years ago when I turned 50, what I thought I'd be doing now, I thought I would probably be working a lot less.

And I'd be a niece on a yacht of sleeping and having nice lunches and just fucking awful. all the time. And maybe we work if we have to, if we really have to go get some cash and do something. And we don't really give a shit about any of that anymore. That's, you know, in the past. And that's, of course, not what happened. I met a woman that I fell

madly in love with. We had five children in seven years. The most fucked up insane plan. I'm 62 years old. I have a three-month-old son. Really cute. Everything is a term.

of my availability. But I do think that in this coming year, especially once the vaccine is here, and we can move around a little bit more freely, I want to make sure that we, 2020 election was, of course, the most important election in the world ever. We always hear people say that, but this one really was. And then number two, the 2022 election is the next most important election, because if we don't take down some of these senators that are up for real election and these members of the House, we have to give Biden, who is that? is that that's not mine that's not mine either

was it mine it may have been one of yours they're coming they're coming through they're coming through the boy coming to get me I'm like I'm like Fagan and Oliver

twist they're coming to get me here in my lair anyway so I think that in order to give Biden more resources and to strengthen that whole thing that's what I'm very keen on is picking a modest handful of the Senate and House races and even local races

and putting some energy into that and raising money for that. I mean, I hate the whole campaign finance thing. But, you know, we certainly contemplated not leaving the country, because that's always a tired idea. People say they want to leave the country. The idea of leaving America,

oddly enough, is kind of unthinkable to me at once. But taking a break from here, like if Trump had won, we probably would have left for like a year and gone to London or Spain or Italy or somewhere pretty, and culturally, we'd wait for the COVID to die down a little bit more. And when we thought we could travel freely, we probably would go somewhere else.

And we're still contemplating the same idea. We're still thinking that even though Biden and Harris won, we still think it's a great time to get the hell out of here, you know, after the COVID vaccine gets addressed and gets circulated. You know, maybe the fall of next year we go away for a while just to have that experience with the kids because. Right, once they get older. situation, the political race and the COVID, forcing us to think that way. We were forced to think,

where do we go for our kids to live a normal life? And what occurred to us was that, you know, once we started to open up to that idea, it didn't matter who won the race. Like, we really want to get out of here, just, not that we want to get out of here, they're just somewhere else we want to try for a while and get a taste of while the kids are young, you know what I mean? You have this family that's like a very ensconced, or at least was in Long Island. and politics, do you ever think about, like, pushing your brother to run for that congressional seat? Actually, that brother, Billy, lives in California, but do you ever think about, like, Baldwin's in office? No, I don't. I mean, there was a time when I really was very keen on that, but that, because of the, my kids, you hear that herd of elephants going to the dog.

that was something that was a huge dream of mine and I really thought my heart was in the right place and doing that for the right reason. He's talking to Molly Zhang fast. I thought that there was something that was a huge dream of mine, but I think with the kids now, I still think about it. I still would like to run for something, but probably I don't think I would because my wife doesn't want that kind of lifestyle. Yeah.

I mean, I really thought that I would, if I did that, I would be doing it for the right reason. You know, it's like the life I have now, and this sounds like Trump, unfortunately. But the life I have now, I'm very happy with. Yeah. In order to go into that life where, you know, I went to an event. I went to the Democratic caucus in Iowa to give a speech. I was the keynote speaker. And I went to Des Moines to give this speech a few years ago.

And we went to three different rooms. There was like the gold room, the platinum room, diamond room. You know, we're from a room of like, you know, pigs in a blanket and beers and guys with open-collar shirts and more of a working-class crowd. And, you know, they've got food in their mouth when they're talking to you and everybody wants a picture. It's a very kind of retail politics. Then the next room was more of higher donors and white wine and chicken skewers. And then the third room, the diamond room, was no drinks, no food. They wouldn't bother eating at the center.

They were all on their way to the country club for dinner right after this event. And that was like the high-end donors to this event. And my friend turned to me, the guy that brokered this appearance I had, he said to me, he goes, now if you ran for office in New York, he goes, this is what you would be doing six nights a week. Like six nights a week, you're raising money and you're just out there and you don't have any life. And I love my fantasy would be to be appointed the ambassador to Spain. Or better yet, my wife is the ambassador to Spain. And I sit back and she can come from work and I just go.

go, oh no, you're kidding. And they said that? Oh, God, no, that's terrible. And I just sit back and relax and enjoy myself. That's great. I dreamed about it for a long, long time, but I don't think that that's possible. Yeah. That's interesting, though.

I mean, you do have a lot of, you can maybe make one of your siblings to it. One of them, except for one of them. Have I missed any really important question that I need to ask you? Well, my dream now, I told my wife, I said, let's sell our house on Long Island. Right. And let's sell our apartment and convert everything to cash. And then go and live in, and we're going to pick 12 cities. And we're going to live for a year in each city in the fanciest, most expensive hotel.

We'll spend a million dollars in a year on room service and tipping people and parking. And we're going to go to like the Ritz Madrid. We're going to go to a crayon. We're going to go to the Connought. We're going to go to all of our favorite hotels. Tokyo, Moscow, Johannes, you know, Cape Town. It doesn't matter.

You know what I mean? Buenos Aires. We go to these 12 cities. And then when we're done, we turn to the kids and say, we don't have any money left to put you through school. We're broke. There's no money. But what an experience that has been?

Hasn't this been a great experience for all of you? Isn't that sound like a good plan? It's very wrong. all ten and bounds. Bingo. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I'm still pushing my wife to do that, but she's resisting. Yeah, I can't imagine one.

On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science, who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app

and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly JongFast and he's the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studed The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber.

Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.