Alec Baldwin on becoming Trump

Vanity Fair's April cover story, "Alec Baldwin Sounds Off," is adapted from Baldwin's memoir, "Nevertheless," out April 4, along with comments from "Jimmy Kimmel Live" on March 1:

When the ["Saturday Night Live"] stage manager took me to my mark for the first dress rehearsal, I had no idea what I was going to do. I mean, literally, the moment I walked out, I just said to myself, "Eyebrow up," and I tried to stick my face and my mouth out. For the actual show, when I was in the makeup room, I put my wig on, and it was like a scene from a mental hospital. I'm getting the wig on me, and I'm sitting there the whole time going "Gyna, Gyna, Gyna." I didn't think about it—I just did it. Now I should probably tell people, "I worked on it for months."

People ask me, "What is your whole gag?' And I tell them, "You can suggest the voice or the way a person looks, but to be successful you have to think of who that person is. To me Trump is someone who is always searching for a stronger, better word, but he never finds it. Whenever I play him, I make a long pause to find that word, and then I just repeat the word I started with: 'These people are great people. They're fantastic people, and I just want to say that working with them was . . . a fantastic experience.' "