‘We were so hopeful he would come’: Baldwin says ‘SNL’ invited Trump to show
PRESIDENT Donald Trump — the real one — could have been on “Saturday Night Live” earlier this year, according to Alec Baldwin.
In an appearance on Wednesday on “Ellen,” Baldwin, who famously parodies the president on the NBC sketchcomedy show, revealed that “SNL” had invited Trump to make an appearance back in February.
“When I hosted ‘ SNL’ this season (for a record 17th time), we invited him to come,” Baldwin told host Ellen DeGeneres. “We were so hopeful he would come, but he didn’t show up.”
Baldwin made similar comments last month on “The Howard Stern Show.” The SiriusXM host asked Baldwin if appearing with Trump would have implied that the actor supported his policies. Baldwin, an outspoken critic of the president, didn’t think so, telling Stern that “’SNL’ is an entertainment show. It’s there to entertain and then, when that’s over with, I don’t hold back.”
Trump hosted “Saturday Night Live” in November 2015 when he was a presidential candidate, but it’s no secret that the president and “Saturday Night Live” have a pretty adversarial relationship these days. Last year, Trump attacked the show repeatedly, calling it “unwatchable” and “not funny at all.” That was back when “SNL” was mining comedy from a chaotic election cycle and Trump’s unexpected victory in the presidential election. We know now that the show was just getting started.
Despite Trump not accepting “SNL’s” invitation, there was still a lot of him on the show that night. Baldwin impersonated the president in a spoof of “The People’s Court,” and Leslie Jones tried to make the case for her own Trump impersonation in a sketch that also featured Vanessa Bayer donning a suit and blonde wig.
Baldwin returned to “SNL” twice last month, including in a cold open which found the president meeting with supporters in Kentucky, where he proclaimed: “In Trump’s America, men work in two places: coal mines or Goldman Sachs.”
Baldwin told DeGeneres that he was initially reluctant to do the impersonation. “Lorne ( Michaels) was calling me and saying, ‘ Do you want to play Trump? I said ‘ I don’t want to play Trump. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.’”
In March, Baldwin told “Extra” that “the maliciousness of this White House has people very worried, which is why I’m not going to do it much longer, the impersonation.”
But on “Ellen,” Baldwin recounted stories of fans stopping him on the street to thank him for his parody. “SNL” returns this weekend, but there’s no word yet on whether Baldwin will make an appearance.
It’s probably safe to say the real Donald Trump will not. —