One of the relative highlights of the US election season was seeing Alec Baldwin‘s angry, raspy-voiced Donald Trump play off Kate McKinnon‘s jittery Hillary Clinton in Saturday Night Live sketches, but it appears that might all be done.
On Friday, the actor’s publicist revealed that he would not be returning for this weekend’s Dave Chappelle-hosted episode, adding that she was unsure if he would do it again.
Balwdin himself appeared to confirm this in an interview with WNYC‘s The Brian Lehrer Show, in which he told the host: “I’m trying to shed the Donald Trump cloak.”
He added, of his appearances on the show:
“I’m not an impressionist, per se, but if you do any kind of comedy and they ask you to do that, most of the time, there’s some degree of appreciation, I think, involving somebody you like. Trump is somebody who, I don’t hate Trump, but he’s not somebody I admire, so it was more difficult.”
He later revealed that he was reluctant to take on the role in the first place, adding:
“When I was approached by Lorne [Michaels], who is a friend of mine, to do it, my first impulse was ‘no.’ Because in order to do that effectively, you need to have at least some appreciation of the person … for which Trump I have none. I have had a wave of people… it’s kind of unsettling to me actually how many people come up to me all day long and they thank me because they needed something to laugh about. They needed a release.”
Before Balwdin came to SNL in October, Donald Trump was played by a number of people, including ex-cast member Taran Killam, and frequent guest star Darrell Hammond, who also serves as the show’s announcer.
NBC have not yet commented on who will play Trump this week or in future.
Source: Inside Edition.
Photo: NBC / Getty.
