Parting Shot

Alec Baldwin

“trump is someone who you’d have to be clinically insane to think that he was a qualified leader in this country,” says Alec Baldwin, who famously portrays the president on Saturday Night Live. The actor won an Emmy for his satirical depiction of the commander in chief, but his desire to tackle politics and current affairs through the lens of entertainment doesn’t stop at Donald Trump. Baldwin’s latest film, The Public, confronts critical issues such as homelessness and climate change through the story of a brutal winter cold front that hits Cincinnati and leads several homeless men to seek shelter in a public library. Baldwin plays the supporting role of Detective Bill Ramstead, a man whose drug-addicted son is also homeless. Baldwin, a father of five, says he understood the heartache his character was going through. “It’s very painful for him,” the actor explains, “but it creates the empathy that allows him to drive through the rest of the story.”

How have Trump and his followers shaped the political landscape?

I’ll apply all of their labels: They hate liberal Hollywood, East Coast elites, the overeducated people that they believe are controlling the faith of the country. It’s more what they stand against than what they stand for. You can never change their minds and satisfy them. Pretty much 90 percent of what we do on SNL is just repeat things that Trump has said. I mean, that’s why they hate us most of all.

Preparing for The Public, how did you connect with your character?

The most painful thing I could think of is giving your child nearly everything and they still turn out very troubled and self-destructive. That must hurt like hell. I think about what a great mom my wife [Hilaria Baldwin] is. I think about how my kids are being raised with a lot of opportunities and comforts. They’re very well cared for and provided for, but that doesn’t guarantee anything. My character, a cop who probably has a certain code that [he] would raise his kids a certain way, [has a] son [who] turns out the opposite.

What’s the one thing you hope viewers take away from this film?

There’s things that we need to do short term that are gonna cost us a lot of money, but we have the money. We need to solve these problems now—in the short term— before they become long-term nightmares. —Dory Jackson

“Ninety percent of what we do on SNL is just repeat things that Trump has said.”