It looks like Saturday Night Live has bid farewell to Alec Baldwin and his pouty impersonation of President Donald Trump. As they recreated an iconic end in television from The Sopranos, which was really a cliffhanger masked as a finale, we are left with some questions of our own. Namely, is Alec Baldwin hanging up the orange wig and leaving SNL?
It could be that Baldwin wants to take some time off to be with his family. Last week, Baldwin welcomed his fourth child with wife Hilaria Baldwin. With four kids under the age of five, it seems like the perfect time to take a step back. Baldwin has also expressed exasperation with playing the politician. “Every time I do it now, it's like agony,” said the actor a couple months back on his new ABC talk show, Sundays With Alec Baldwin. With Trump out of the picture, the show’s political landscape will change significantly. If only the real world were so lucky.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
Much like the end of The Sopranos, the lead character’s fate is left hanging in the balance. Baldwin isn’t the first, and likely not the last Trump to grace the SNL stage, but it’s hard to imagine a mocking portrayal of the president without him.
It’s been nearly two years since Baldwin joined the cast as a regular guest star for his Emmy-winning impression of Trump. While the president himself is not a big fan, Baldwin has become a mainstay of the show since the campaign days. In the time that the actor has been portraying the president, he has been joined by a star-studded cabinet in addition to some of SNL’s best political impersonations by the cast. Last night, Baldwin as Trump sat in a diner booth joined by Kate McKinnon as Rudy Giuliani, Ben Stiller as Michael Cohen, and Mikey Day as Donald Trump Jr. as Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” played in the background. Together, they raised their glasses to a “great first year of the Russia investigation” before their send-off dinner was crashed by none other than Robert De Niro as Robert Mueller.
As one of the major players in political news for the past couple years, it is hard to imagine up-to-the-moment takes on the White House without him; however, SNL’s political impersonations have never been so extensive and polished with Aidy Bryant playing a convincing Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Cecily Strong taking on Melania Trump, and McKinnon dominating with no fewer than 15 impressions of political figures at her disposal. It is possible that the Trump torch will be passed to another cast member or recurring guest star. After all, Baldwin isn’t the first person to don the spray tan in the name of sketch comedy. Given all the strong, talented women deftly portraying many of our politicians, it would be interesting to see a female take on Trump.