Despite Rob Schneider’s rant to the contrary, Alec Baldwin says there’s still life left in “Saturday Night Live.”
Schneider recently slammed former cast member Kate McKinnon’s infamous impressions of Hillary Clinton — saying her work proved the show was “over.” Now Long Island native Baldwin, who has hosted the NBC sketch show 17 times, has issued a dismissive rebuttal to the comedian, 58, in a lengthy Instagram video Thursday.
“I guess it must be an incredibly slow news cycle if we’re talking about Rob Schneider’s thoughts about Kate McKinnon playing Hillary Clinton so many years ago,” Baldwin noted on social media.
“You’ve got to be careful when you criticize people for their judgment,” the “30 Rock” star went on. “And you turn around and pause for a moment and realize, well, that judgment of theirs led them to hire you once upon a time.”
Baldwin has portrayed former President Donald Trump on more than one occasion on the comedy series, and the “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo” star had blasted him for the impression back in 2018.
To Schneider’s criticism, Baldwin had this to say: “I made [Trump] a cartoon. I wanted to take him to another level of madness.”
The comedian slammed “SNL” during a recent episode of the “Glenn Beck Podcast.”FilmMagicBaldwin also said he can’t understand the political mindset of celebrities like Schneider.
“I hear that these conservatives say that there’s a bias against them, and I think that’s unfortunate,” Baldwin continued in his missive. “There’s people that I know, and I won’t name them, who are conservatives, who are arch-conservatives … Trump is the only president in our country’s history who has served as president and was unchanged by the process.
“It must be tough for the Rob Schneiders of the world. It must be tough that your man is a maniac,” Baldwin asserted.
Alec Baldwin as then-President Donald Trump during a February 2020 “SNL” episode.NBCU Photo Bank via Getty ImagesAnd the “Hunt for Red October” actor — who said Schneider is otherwise “very, very funny” — further noted that “it’s not easy” to make a live TV show like “SNL” and that inconsistency in sketches is understandable.
“I divide the episodes of ‘SNL’ the way I divide everything else,” Baldwin said. “I divide it into thirds: A third of it’s good, a third of it’s so-so, and a third of it’s not very good. And a third of the episodes of ‘SNL’ have been good, and a third of them so-so, and a third not so good.”
“Hot Chick” actor Schneider was a writer on “Saturday Night Live” starting in 1989 and was later a cast member between 1990 and 1994. He revealed on “The Glenn Beck Podcast” last week that he felt McKinnon’s Clinton role from a 2016 sketch ruined the show.
“I hate to crap on my old show,” Schneider said. “I literally prayed, ‘Please have a joke at the end. Don’t do this. Please don’t go down there.’ And there was no joke at the end, and I went, ‘It’s over. It’s over. It’s not going to come back.’”
Kate McKinnon’s impressions of Hillary Clinton — especially the one where she sang the Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah” in 2016 — rattled Schneider to his core.Getty Images “SNL” will be entering its 47th season this fall, “so they must be doing something right,” Baldwin said in his social media post.
“Of course, I love Lorne [Michaels, the creator of “SNL’]. I love the institution that is ‘SNL.’ I’ve had a lot of fun with them,” Baldwin added.
