Alec Baldwin On New MSNBC Show: ‘I wasn’t that wild about that idea’ At First

By Alex Weprin 

Actor Alec Baldwin talks to Politico about his new MSNBC program “Up Late,” which starts Friday. Baldwin is blunt about how the show came about, including hesitations he had before signing the deal.

“I wasn’t that wild about that idea because MSNBC — which I’m a fan of — it had a certain stamp that I wasn’t sure I wanted to wear. It is this harshly political thing and, regardless of my own politics, I wasn’t sure I wanted to dine out on that,” Baldwin said.

He also wants to create a show that doesn’t look like your typical cable news program.

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“In a Paul Verhoeven movie, when you cut to the news in, like ‘RoboCop,’ you’re in some futuristic world where all of the sudden we’re going to show the news on TV, and the news is on some almost Vegas-like set, shiny, sparkly.”

Instead, he’d love to have something akin to Charlie Rose’s simple setup, but don’t expect that either.

“I wanted to do that, and MSNBC is not going to do that,” Baldwin said.

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