'I just said to myself, eyebrow out': Watch Alec Baldwin on playing Donald Trump
The market for playing Donald Trump on TV is highly competitive, it appears.
Many of those who do not care for the real Donald Trump in the US have gleefully accepted actor Alec Baldwin’s version on Saturday Night Live.
In an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday (video above) Baldwin explained how he got used to the idea. “You’ve gotta kind of think of who [Trump] is,” he said. “I’ve said this countless times: to me Trump is someone who is always searching for a stronger, better word, and he never finds it.”
Baldwin revealed that Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels and actor Tina Fey pushed him to actually do it. He wasn’t sure how he was going to play it, but the persona came to him on the spot.
He said, “I mean literally the moment I walked out there, I just said to myself, ‘Eyebrow out.’’’
“I’m getting the wig on me and I’m sitting there the whole time going, ‘China, China,’ again and again,” he added.
After Trump announced that he’s going to give this year’s White House Correspondents’ dinner a miss, Baldwin hoped he’d be able to make an appearance instead as the president himself. “It should be whoever the President hates seeing the most,” Kimmel joked, “and that’s undoubtedly you.”
He told Kimmel that there is actually a heavily competitive environment around playing Trump. “There’s a couple guys on the Internet who are saying…‘I’m the only man who should play Trump!’ There’s a lot of Trump competition.”
Baldwin is currently working on a satirical book about the president titled You Can’t Spell America Without Me: The Really Tremendous Inside Story of My Fantastic First Year as President Donald J. Trump, which will be released on November 7.