Six months into Alec Baldwin's tenure as Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live—and 114 days into the chaotic Trump administration—the line between reality and satire remains as blurry as ever. So blurry, in fact, that at least one member of Trump's inner circle considers Baldwin's impersonation to be spot-on.
"I'm not going to name names," Baldwin told The Hollywood Reporter, "but a cabinet member walked up to me at a restaurant in Manhattan—Manhattan, that's a hint—and he goes, 'I gotta tell you something. This thing you're doing is good, it's really good... I'll get fired if anybody quoted me saying this, but that's exactly what he's like when you do it.' "
Later in the THR cover story on SNL's Trump bump, Melissa McCarthy reveals that her breakout turn as Sean Spicer didn't initially feel to her like a good fit. "I don't do impressions, I don't have the ear for it," she said. "When I read the script, I was like, 'Oh, God, that is juicy, but I don't understand how we're going to physically make it work.' To which the amazing special effects person at SNL was like, 'Oh, yeah, that's not that big of a deal. That's gonna take me, like, 15 minutes.' I was like, 'Hey!'"
If McCarthy had said no, the role of Spicer would have gone to Beck Bennett, who currently plays Vladimir Putin. "He has an amazing impression," revealed writer Kent Sublette. "In fact, he reads Spicer for the read-through because Melissa's not usually there."
