Alec Baldwin says his SNL role as Donald Trump is getting fatigued

With a new season around the corner, Alec Baldwin says he’ll continue to play Donald Trump on SNL despite growing tired of the role.

For the last two or more seasons of Saturday Night Live, the show’s cold open has typically followed the same format: either being about Donald Trump and some of his recent shenanigans (or blunders), or one of the blunders from his administration. As long as the Trump presidency continues, so it seems the Trump admin cold opens will as well.

The man behind The Donald, Alec Baldwin, confirmed that he would be back as the character for SNL’s 44th season, even though he’s had some reservations about the role himself. Appearing on the podcast Origins with James Andrew Miller, Baldwin revealed that he’ll continue to play the role because of his love for the show and its cast:

"I have fun doing it, there’s no doubt about that. They are all old and dear friends of mine, and I love going there. When the show is good, there is nothing like it. But for me, I think I’m going to do some of it, but not a whole lot. Because I also think, and this is critical, there is a lot of fatigue here."

Baldwin is certainly right about the fatigue part. Sometimes the political cold opens knock it out of the park; other times, they fall flat. (Last season’s Bachelor-like cold open was a complete snoozefest that was barely funny, for example.)

The Hollywood Reporter pointed out in an interview with him earlier this year that Baldwin said playing the role was agony. But after being tweeted by Trump (who said watching him was agony), it seems like Trump’s tweet was the fire he needed to persevere through the role. He cleverly responded back to the president on Twitter, saying he’ll gladly hang in there.

Hopefully, now that Baldwin’s made this recent comment, the SNL writers will know that they don’t always have to open with Trump or any one of his featured White House players. At this point in the presidency, we’ve (sadly) gotten used to the whole Trump song and dance: he says something obnoxious, liberals debate him, and the conservatives find a way to defend him.

SNL should really just be that moment where we can forget about Trump for a few hours. Sure, a sketch every now and then wouldn’t hurt, but they’re becoming a bit repetitive after so many years. If the writers need a sign to know that they can go back to doing non-political cold opens, then let this be it.

If anything, we’ll just have to bear with this, as Baldwin puts it, through the impeachment hearings, resignation speech, and the farewell helicopter ride. But for now, the late-night show has a lot of political ground to cover after being away for the summer, so we can give them a pass just this once.