Alec Baldwin earns bragging rights as the most familiar “Saturday Night Live” host when he opens the NBC show’s 37th season on Sept. 24.
It will be his 16th time as host. The “30 Rock” actor moves past Steve Martin, who has done it 15 times. Radiohead will be the musical guest, the network said Friday.
Melissa McCarthy of CBS’ “Mike & Molly” and the movie “Bridesmaids” will be the host of the show’s second week, her “SNL” debut. The country trio Lady Antebellum will be her musical guest.
Alec Baldwin says he’s thinking of running for mayor of New York, but not until he learns more about the job.
The “30 Rock” actor tells The New York Times he’ll sit out the 2013 race but will consider running in a later election.
In a wide-ranging interview, the 53-year-old says he’s talking with two universities about enrolling in a master’s program in politics and government. He says he wants to better understand what the fiscal imperatives of the mayor’s job are.
He says running in 2013 is impossible because he’s obligated to complete the current season of “30 Rock.”
Baldwin says he plans to establish a permanent city residence before running. His legal residence is Amagansett, Long Island. He has owned a Manhattan apartment for two decades.
Alec Baldwin has urged Charlie Sheen to “sober up” and “beg” TV executives to reinstate him on Two And A Half Men, insisting the troubled actor “can’t win” his battle with network chiefs.
Sheen was fired by TV bosses earlier this week after months of controversy, which included a public feud with the show’s creator Chuck Lorre, hospitalizations, rehab and a number of headline-grabbing stunts. He also fell out with his former co-star Jon Cryer by labelling him “a troll” for failing to support him.
Sheen subsequently filed legal papers seeking more than $100 million in damages for his dismissal, naming Warner Bros. executives and Lorre in his suit.
Baldwin has now reached out to Sheen, calling for the actor to apologise to TV bosses and “beg for America’s forgiveness” – because he is “a great television star”.
In an article for The Huffington Post, he writes, “You can’t win. Really. You can’t. When executives at studios and networks move up to the highest ranks, they are given a book. The book is called How to Handle Actors. And one principle held dear in that book is that no actor is greater than the show itself when the show is a hit. And, in that regard, they are often right. Add to that the fact that the actor who is torturing their diseased egos is a drug-addled, porn star-squiring, near-Joycean internet ranter, and they really want you to go.
“Granted, it didn’t get real until you insulted them. And your suit may have real grounds. But you know what you should do? Take a nap. Get a shower. Call Chuck. Go on Letterman and make an apology… and then beg for your job back.
“Your fans demand it. You will never win because when you are as big a d**chebag as some of these guys are, they have no choice but to snuff you. (Do you secretly want to get snuffed? So you can go back and make movies?)
“Sober up, Charlie. And get back on TV, if it’s not too late. This is America. You want to really p**s off Chuck and Warner Brothers and CBS? Beg for America’s forgiveness. They will give it to you. And then go back. You are a great television star. And you’ve got the gig. P.S…. buy Cryer a really nice car.”
Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin
Alec Baldwin and Michael Keaton
Stephen Baldwin
Hollywood liberal Alec Baldwin said on Tuesday he was “very, very interested” in running for political office, but was not planning to give up his day job anytime soon.
The actor, who plays a right-wing media executive on the sitcom “30 Rock,” has expressed political aspirations before. But his discussion with talk show host Eliot Spitzer on CNN’s “Parker Spitzer” seemed to advance his position.
“Yes, it’s something that I’m very, very interested in,” Baldwin, 52, replied when Spitzer asked if politics was a “game” he wanted to enter.
But Baldwin hedged his statement by saying that he was just beginning to understand better the craft of acting.
“To quit now when it really feels good and doing it feels good would be an enormously difficult thing to do,” he said. “However, I do believe that people want to believe that someone who deeply cares about the middle-class…would like to seek public office.”
CNN released a transcript and video of the interview, which will air on “Parker Spitzer” on Wednesday and Thursday. Baldwin noted that all four of the U.S. presidents after Ronald Reagan were educated in Ivy League schools.
“What’s missing is …people who have not lost sight of what the middle-class in this country needs,” said Baldwin, who was raised in suburban New York by parents who were teachers.
Baldwin went on to attend George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and later New York University, neither of which is an Ivy League school like Harvard or Yale.
While he has achieved wealth and fame through such movies as “The Hunt for Red October” and his Emmy-winning stint on “30 Rock,” Baldwin told Spitzer he still went to work everyday like many people and that “whatever I’ve accrued hasn’t changed me as a person.”
His CNN interview is not the first time he has talked of a political career. On “60 Minutes” in 2008, he said there were many things ahead for him besides acting.
“I’m going to 50,” Baldwin said at the time. “There’s no age limit on running for office, to a degree. (It is) something I might do one day.”
Alec Baldwin and New York University president John Sexton
Alec Baldwin, a star of NBC’s “30 Rock,” was examined Thursday at a hospital after his daughter called 911 saying he had threatened to take pills after they argued, a law enforcement official said.
Baldwin’s daughter called 911 at around 12:10 a.m. from his Central Park West apartment, according to the official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the person wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.
“This was a misunderstanding on one person’s part. Alec was quickly released from the hospital; he’s completely fine and will be at work today,” the 51-year-old actor’s spokesman, Matthew Hiltzik, said in a statement.
In 2008, Baldwin blamed a bitter custody battle with ex-wife Kim Basinger in part for the anger and frustration he was feeling when he berated their daughter in a phone message leaked earlier to the media.
In the message, Baldwin called Ireland, now 14, a “rude, thoughtless little pig.” He was apparently upset that she had missed his phone call. Baldwin said he apologized to Ireland. He said the message was wrong and “horrified” him.
In his book, “A Promise to Ourselves,” Baldwin railed against the family court system in Los Angeles, offered advice based on his own experience with divorce litigation and talked about how one parent can turn a child against another parent.
Evelyn Karamanos, Basinger’s publicist in California, didn’t immediately return a call from the AP requesting comment.
On March 7, Baldwin and Steve Martin will co-host the 82nd Annual Academy Awards at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles.
In September, Baldwin won his second straight Emmy Award as lead actor in a comedy for “30 Rock.” Last month, he and “30 Rock” co-star Tina Fey won the Screen Actors Guild Award for best acting in a comedy series and he won a Golden Globe Award for best actor in a TV series, comedy or musical.
Alec Baldwin has zero interest in Bethenny Frankel, despite what was reported elsewhere. The “30 Rock” star and the “Real Housewives of New York City” brunette crossed paths Sunday in East Hampton. “My friend, Jessica Ambrose, and her daughter, Lyman, are big fans of her show and wanted to meet Bethenny, so I asked for them to be introduced to her,” Baldwin told us. “I don’t know her and wasn’t looking to meet her, but somehow this ends up in the Daily News — manufacturing a nice gesture into a total BS item suggesting I want to date this woman. Nothing against her, but I’m not dating anyone.”
(source)
