Saturday Night Live returned to the schedule this weekend with a big episode featuring Margot Robbie, the return of a slew of cast members, a memorable "Weekend Update" and, of course, Donald Trump. Recently, the show hired Alec Baldwin to play the role of the business mogul and politician. Apparently, we can thank Tina Fey for that brilliant bit of casting. Here's what Lorne Michaels had to say in a recent interview:
The idea came out of a conversation with Tina Fey at some point during the summer... We were talking about who should do it. And she said, 'Well, the person that should really play it is Alec.' And I went, 'Yeah!' A light went on.
Over the summer, Saturday Night Live let go of two of its regular cast members, Taran Killam and Jay Pharoah. When the decision was made to let the two comedians go so they could take on other projects, it also meant that SNL was down a couple of politician impressions. Prior to Season 42, Pharoah had played President Obama and Killam had taken on the role of presidential hopeful Donald Trump. Lorne Michaels told THR that he happened to speak to Tina Fey about the matter and she insta had a great idea. However, it wasn't that easy to get the actor on board.
Lorne did talk to Alec Baldwin, but at the time, the actor had obligations to a movie and his family that kept him from being cast as Donald Trump.
Then I mentioned it to Alec but he'd already committed himself to a movie and [he and wife Hilaria] were about to have their third child. There were a lot of obstacles in the way to working it out. But I just thought he'd be brilliant doing it and I thought he and Kate [McKinnon] would be a match.
Eventually, the scheduling worked out, and during the Season 42 premiere, Alec Baldwin finally premiered as Donald Trump in a sketch that also included Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton.
I personally really like the casting and can't wait to see it pan out more in the coming weeks. If if this Saturday's episode wasn't your favorite, there are still a couple of months until the election, which means we should be getting at least a few more cold opens of this ilk. To tune in and catch them, you can watch new episodes on Saturday night at 11:30 p.m. ET. In addition, here's when the rest of fall TV is returning.
To catch the full SNL sketch featuring Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump, head to the next page!
