With a new ABC talk show and his return to ‘Saturday Night Live,’ the unfiltered star is mobilizing against the GOP (“Anything you equate with leadership, they don’t have it”), courting controversy (“Ever since I played Trump, black people love me”) and revealing mixed emotions on the #MeToo movement: “People write, ‘You’re next aren’t you?'”
“I don’t want to get this wrong …”
Alec Baldwin begins many of his sentences this way, signaling that he’s about to dive into trouble.
The first time comes as he’s wolfing down a slice from Famous Original Ray’s — a Ninth Avenue hole-in-the-wall that’s neither famous nor original, “but at this point,” he says, “Grandpa’s hungry.” The conversation has turned, at Baldwin’s urging, to the #MeToo movement and the growing list of men whose careers have imploded amid allegations of sexual misconduct.
“I want to preface this by saying that all these guys who have done terrible things, who doesn’t want them punished? This whole idea that I’m covering for [accused director] Jimmy Toback or whatever? The minute that people are found guilty of some crime or there’s a glistening reservoir of information or evidence …”
He pauses there, takes a swig of cream soda and dives in.
“It’s not a witch hunt because a witch hunt indicates that there is very little truth, if none at all, and there is a lot of truth here. But what worries me is that this is a fire that needs constant kindling.” Late last fall, it all became personal. In the wake of Harvey Weinstein’s unraveling, a publication reached out to one of Baldwin’s former co-stars and began questioning her about his behavior on a particular 1980s film set. The actress, who’d been a minor at the time, contacted Baldwin to let him know. (In sharing the story for the first time, he asked that I omit the names.)
“She goes, ‘Alec, they called me and they said that a wardrobe person said you sexually molested me and that you constantly had me sitting on your lap and they asked me for a comment.’ I go, ‘My God, what did you say?’ And she said, ‘I told them it was ridiculous, that you never groped me.'” I can feel Baldwin’s blood pressure rising from across the table. “I just remember thinking in that moment, ‘Wow, they’re looking for people. This is a fire that needs fresh wood, and they’re coming for me.'”
No story ever materialized, and though Baldwin has taken hits for defending pals like Toback and Woody Allen, his own career has not been damaged. In fact, at 60, he can’t remember ever being this busy. In the past year or two, he’s popped up in at least a dozen movies and TV shows, including the latest installment of Mission: Impossible, Hulu’s The Looming Tower and awards contender A Star Is Born; emceed an acclaimed podcast (WNYC’s Here’s the Thing) and a popular game show (ABC’s Match Game); won an Emmy for his Donald Trump impression on Saturday Night Live; authored two books (his own memoir and a mock presidential one); lent his voice to the New York Philharmonic; and raised a few million dollars for a collection of arts causes close to his heart. And now, he’s about to take what could be his biggest gamble yet: The Alec Baldwin Show, airing at 10 p.m. Sundays on ABC starting Oct. 14.
For those keeping track, it’ll be Baldwin’s second shot at carrying his own talk show. In 2013, MSNBC created a late-night vehicle for him that’s remembered mostly for how quickly it got canceled — five episodes in, after he allegedly hurled a homophobic slur at a photographer during a confrontation outside his apartment. (He’s long denied the language but apologized nonetheless.) ABC is betting that over the past five years, the oldest and most successful of the four Baldwin brothers has wised up. “If there’s a risk, it’s a fairly mild one,” ABC’s alternative programming chief Rob Mills tells me, though it’s hard to imagine a less forgiving media environment for an aging white guy with a penchant for running his mouth. His wife, Hilaria, has urged Baldwin not to Google himself, but he admits he can’t always heed her advice.
“So, you read these things where people have you in the Ryan O’Neal school of, like, ‘I’m gonna deck a few photographers’ and ‘Don’t you touch my woman’ — and if you’re this two-fisted, Irish, pugilistic kind of person, they have you pegged that way,” he says. “I get it a lot online. People will write, ‘You seem like the kind of guy who would do that.’ Or, ‘You’re next, aren’t you?’…
