In a revelation which has the potential to be met with a scathing tweet by Donald Trump, Alec Baldwin has said he gets paid $1,400 for every Saturday Night Live impersonation of the President-elect.
The actor told the New York Times the amount he gets paid per show (which equates to £1,135) as the newspaper joined him to prepare for his now infamous appearances on the landmark comedy show.
Baldwin commandeered the Trump impersonation in October and has since ridiculed the business mogul one weekly appearance at a time. His skits have included his character stalking a Kate McKinnon-played Hillary Clinton around the stage in a nod to the second presidential debate, choosing to re-tweet a 16-year-old at a security briefing and roundly mocking his controversial cabinet appointments.
Baldwin said the key to the impersonations are the hand movements and short pauses in between his words. "I see a guy who seems to pause and dig for the more precise and better language he wants to use, and never finds it. It's the same dish – it's a grilled cheese sandwich rhetorically over and over again."
The 58-year-old added that now Mr Trump has been elected, something which he and the cast of the show did not anticipate, he feels an "obligation" to continue with the act despite accusations that impressions such as his "humanised" Mr Trump. "I think that now that he is the president, we have an obligation – as we would if it was him or her – to dial it up as much as we can," he said.
Despite the presumed hectic schedule of the President-elect, Mr Trump has found time to tell Baldwin exactly what he thinks of the impression. He has claimed SNL is “boring”, “biased” and “terrible” and labelled Baldwin’s act “mean-spirited”,"not very good” and “not funny” among other things.
Baldwin has responded to Mr Trump, saying he will only stop the act on one condition: He releases his tax returns.
