Alec Baldwin Gives His Best ‘Boss Baby’ Advice to Trump, Talks ‘SNL’ Status

Alec Baldwin is bringing to life a bossy baby who craves power, wants a golden toilet and imagines his portrait hanging on the walls for eternity — and no, it’s not President Donald Trump.

The actor, who has been famously lampooning Trump on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, is now voicing the starring baby, known only as The Boss Baby, in the DreamWorks Animation film named after his titular character. 

Since everyone in the film listens to The Boss Baby, Baldwin shared the memo he thinks his character would send to Trump while speaking to The Hollywood Reporter at the film’s Monday night premiere in NYC: “The Boss Baby’s advice to Donald Trump would be to try harder to work well with others.”

The Boss Baby is based on the children’s book by Marla Frazee, who, when she wrote it nearly a decade ago, could never have imagined that her onesie suit-wearing and corporate-minded newborn would one day be compared to the current president of the United States.

“It’s outrageous — the synchronicity of Alec Baldwin and his Saturday Night Live Trump and then Boss Baby,” she told THR. “It resonates on so many levels. Speaking for myself only. I’m not quite sure that this is how I would have wanted the country’s trajectory to go, but yes the echoes are very much unbelievable.”

The film tells the story of how newborn babies often rule the house by documenting the Templeton family’s newest addition through the eyes of seven-year-old Tim (voiced by Miles Bakshi). His world is turned upside-down by the arrival of The Boss Baby, who at first steals the love and affection of his parents (Lisa Kudrow and Jimmy Kimmel) by masquerading as an adorable, drooling infant.

 

We have our very own #BossBaby #RafaelThomas @dreamworksanimation

A post shared by Hilaria Thomas Baldwin (@hilariabaldwin) on Mar 20, 2017 at 4:06pm PDT

Baldwin had his own boss baby in tow when he arrived at AMC Loews Lincoln Square with his one-year-old, a suit-wearing Rafael, along with daughter Carmen, three, and wife Hilaria. And while he was excited to show off his latest onscreen commandeering man-child, he told THR that his Trump alter ego would be returning to SNL
in the upcoming weeks.

“I think I’m going to do Trump on and off with SNL for a little while,” he said of the remaining four episodes of the season, which will be streamed live nationwide for the first time in the show’s history. “I’m going to do it for the rest of the season and beyond that, I don’t know if they want me to. People always ask me but we’ll see. I don’t know how much more people want to see — and what will happen next year.”

Though Trump has taken to interviews and Twitter to voice his opinion of Baldwin, co-star Kudrow doesn’t anticipate the film and its universal message will reach Trump, because he likely won’t see it.

“[Trump] probably thinks it’s about him,” she told THR. “I just love that it’s from that seven-year-old kid’s point of view, that there’s not enough love to go around. But I like that then they have to work together and then they grow to love each other. I don’t think [Trump] will watch Boss Baby and go, ‘Oh. Maybe I could change some things’ — learning is an active thing.”

Director Tom McGrath (Madagascar) admitted that “it’s not that big of a leap” for Trump to spot similarities, but he doesn’t anticipate that any Trump supporters will be turned off at the box office.

“We just wanted to tell a story about love and family,” he said. “No matter what the times are, it’s always a good message to put out there. And to laugh at ourselves is always good. It’s a little bit of medicine for whatever troubles there are in the world. This is a movie about acceptance and accepting your family as your own. So it’s a grassroots campaign. Love starts in the family.”

And producer Ramsey Ann Naito wants to remind everyone that Baldwin was cast three and a half years ago.

“Who knew that he was going to do this and it was going to be such a big sensation?” she said of Baldwin on SNL. “We’ve talked about it a lot, but it really illustrates Alec’s ability as an actor. We recorded him 25 to 30 times over the course of the movie production so we got a chance to see how great he is at impressions. He does a great Christopher Walken, Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, Bill Clinton. He’s so good at it.”

McGrath added, “Marla [Frazee] had this cute book with a baby in a suit and instantly it was just like — well that’s Alec Baldwin. It’s a no brainer.”

While McGrath isn’t ready to entertain the thought of a sequel (“After delivering one child you don’t necessarily want to think about the next one right away,” he said), Frazee told THR about her most recent book, The Bossier Baby, which came out in the fall.

“The Bossier Baby has a little girl baby coming in and firing The Boss Baby and she’s the CEO,” said Frazee. Though Boss Baby ends on a similar nod, Frazee assures audience-goers that her Bossier Baby wasn’t the one making the cameo.

“In real life, I want Hillary Clinton to play her,” she said. “I have her in a pantsuit with pearls and everything.”

The Boss Baby releases in theaters March 31.