Alec Baldwin Will Return To Play Trump On ‘SNL’

Alec Baldwin will be back as President Donald Trump in the upcoming 44th season of Saturday Night Live. The news was revealed during James Andrew Miller’s Origins podcast focused on the new season, which kicks off Saturday, September 29.

In Origins Chapter 4: Saturday Night Live: Behind the Scenes of Season 44, Miller has conversations with Baldwin, producer Lorne Michaels, Weekend Update co-anchors (and Emmy hosts) Michael Che and Colin Jost, plus Kenan Thompson and other cast members giving their takes on the new season. The podcast, produced in partnership with Cadence 13 is available here .

Among the highlights:

Lorne Michaels on Baldwin’s Trump making a return to next season of SNL: “I think with Alec, I’ve known him and worked with him for so long, that needless to say I trust him. And the audience connects to him in that role. Sometimes I feel like we are still in campaign mode. But, I thought – we see each other a fair amount, so we don’t much talk about it in the off-season. And then, I think – he was at the US Open last week, and somebody asked him if he was doing Trump. And he said, ‘yea.’ And his agent Matt DelPiano texted me and said, ‘I think he’s doing Trump.’ And I went oh, ok. But, he is somebody you know you can always count on.”

Alec Baldwin on Trump: “Trump is insane. I think most people know, the guy – he is insane. We have a man who is president who is insane.” Clearly not being shy, “You can’t go far enough with this idiot. You can’t go far enough. You can’t go far enough.”

Colin Jost & Michael Che on SNL keeping up in the Trump-Era:  

Colin Jost: “It’s certainly the craziest political time I’ve been alive for so the show is going to reflect that in some way — the nuance of how often we’ll see Trump, or how that impression evolves, or how the rating for Trump evolves. That’s going to be again that’s constantly happening week-to-week but there’s not like a one or two or a five-year plan for it. There’s just a “We’ll see what happens.” Because we’re now — I don’t know what — three weeks away from the premiere of the show and between now then, so much could change. There could be a Mueller investigation revelation in between those three weeks. You don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s almost, you learn over time. Sometimes you want to plan ahead when you have moments of “I really want to have a grander scheme in place here” and it always gets undone because something comes up and then something changes with Trump, or with America, and attitude shifts. You can never really get ahead of it. You have to wait and you have to be reactive.’”

Michael Che: No Trump, less Trump—I don’t know. Like when it’s right, it’s right. The funny thing is there is a Trump exhaustion in the country and I feel like from the show even, you know. But it’s hard to leave him out of the conversation. I always feel like the one good thing about Saturday Night Live, is it’s always been kind of the time capsule of you know, American culture since it’s been on the air and it’s kind of hard to tell the story of American culture without talking about Donald Trump at least once a week. I mean, we talk about him 40 times a day, just in life, so you know, we’re a show where we have a different type of responsibility. We don’t really just do 90 minutes of avant garde comedy but, I don’t know—it would be hard. We’d miss him I think.”