ALEC’S BLACK EYE
Hit for saying minorities love him as Don
Alec Baldwin’s getting backlash for sounding a bit too much like the person he regularly mocks on “Saturday Night Live.”
The actor claims that “black people love me” ever since he started playing President Trump on the sketch comedy show leading up to the election.
“I don’t know how to say this and I don’t want to get it wrong either, because everything is a minefield of bombs going off, but ever since I played Trump, black people love me,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
“They love me. Everywhere I go, black people go crazy. I think it’s because they’re most afraid of Trump. I’m not going to paint every AfricanAmerican person with the same brush, but a significant number of them are sitting there going, ‘This is going to be bad for black folks.’ “
Some felt that Baldwin — a die-hard Democrat and frequent Trump critic — sounded just like the man he impersonates.
“Someone should tell him that now he sounds like he’s LITERALLY turning INTO Trump by saying this FOOLISHNESS!!” Twitter user @SamFlowers posted.
Another user wrote: “Alec ruins everything by opening his mouth. The reason he plays a raging, fading narcissist so well is because he is one.”
Trump drew attention for touting his support from African-Americans at a 2016 California campaign rally by pointing to a black man and saying, “Look at my AfricanAmerican over here!”
Baldwin’s comments were sparked by an exchange with a young man named Tyrone, who approached the actor and his Hollywood Reporter interviewer as they left a Manhattan pizza joint last month.
Tyrone yelled, “Duuuude, you do that Donald Trump thing real good. Real good.”
Baldwin told the news outlet he draws that kind of response “incessantly” since taking on Trump on “SNL” before the 2016 election. While Baldwin has yet to appear on the current season of the show, which kicked off Sept. 29, both the actor and “SNL” creator and producer Lorne Michaels implied he’d be returning.
“I have fun doing it, there’s no doubt about that,” Baldwin said of playing the President on a September “Origins with James Andrew Miller” podcast. He added that he’d do some Trump skits, “but not a whole lot. Because I also think, and this is critical, there is a lot of fatigue here.”
Michaels said: “I think there is probably no other actor who is looking to take that and follow Alec. And I think, for a new cast member to come in and try, that would be a really tough thing to do.”