FRESH AIR: Alec Baldwin has been keeping busy lately. The star of the animated film The Boss Baby has a new memoir out and also keeps popping up on Saturday Night Live to play President Trump. Baldwin tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that his impression of the president is purposefully exaggerated.
“We’re doing it live on a TV show at 11:30 at night in front of a live audience, so there’s a kind of volume to it,” he says. “It’s kind of the Macy’s Day Parade [version] of Trump — it’s a very larger-than-life thing.” Baldwin grew up in a family of six kids on Long Island, N.Y. His father, a dedicated high school teacher, didn’t make much money, but they bonded over late-night classic movies. Initially, Baldwin thought he would pursue a career in law and government, but he decided instead to go into acting — much to the chagrin of his mother. “She was apoplectic,” Baldwin says. “She was screaming on the phone, ‘What is wrong with you?’ ” Baldwin details his entry into show business, as well as the highs and lows of his career and his life, in his memoir, Nevertheless. MORE