Gage Skidmore
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.' "