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Is Alec Baldwin Trying To Get Fired ?

By fred | September 3, 2008

Alec Baldwin should be pretty happy right now, I would imagine. After all, he is the shinning star of a critically acclaimed television show, and he is winning awards for his tremendous work. This should please him, but apparently it does not. Sure, he says he’s not an “awards-driven person”, but that doesn’t mean you don’t like to see your work being appreciated. “I’d like the show to win an Emmy. Individually, I couldn’t care less.”

Okay, sure, but the show is really great and pretty hilarious, and while not (yet?) a rating-hit it’s doing well so far and got lots of critical acclaim, and Baldwin’s performance has a lot to do in that success. Still, not long ago he was wondering about his career. It’s not that he’s unhappy with the show or his work, but the Emmy nominee might be wondering about what he’ll do now that he just turned 50 (in April).

“There’s other things to do. The world is run by men in their 50s. So I’m trying to decide what to do when I quit this business. Yeah, I do have to find another career. I don’t want to do this… I don’t.”

What seemed to be bothering Baldwin was that he had to oblige by the networks standard, that he couldn’t, that writers couldn’t be free and do whatever they wanted to. “Television, the ratings are the king. The networks have to do it clean. I love The Sopranos; I love everything on the cable stations where it’s much more hard-edged, salty, more adult. The networks, we don’t have that luxury. You can’t go blue. You’ve got to keep it clean. That’s harder to do. The fact that we have a smart show with nothing that caustic or harsh is a miracle.”

So, is it that he wants to go to edgier things, or does he just want to quit acting all together ? The question might be worth asking, because in a recent piece it almost sounds as if Baldwin wouldn’t mind getting fired from 30 Rock, so that he would move on to do “other things”.

As it is explained, at first Baldwin only agreed to be in the pilot, but on the understanding that, should the show be picked up, he would appear in no more than six episodes a season, for six seasons. He didn’t want to commit to a full-time gig, but once the pilot was made and NBC saw it, they said only to be interested in Baldwin was a series regular, to appear in all episodes of the season.

This could have been seen as a compliment, but that’s apparently not really how he took it : “I said, “Go fuck yourself!” I saw it as network scumbags trying to fuck you around. Zucker [Jeff Zucker, President and C.E.O. of NBC Universal, was then running NBC television], I like, but everybody who works for Zucker I have reservations about.

If the show does succeed, it’ll be something of a fucking miracle, because NBC hasn’t done a fucking thing to help this show at all. This show is the red-headed stepchild in the lineup. They’ve gone out of their way to wring the last drops out of My Name Is Earl and Scrubs. Those shows are done! They’re cooked! Yet they do a one-hour episode of Earl! You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”

Okay, so first of all: it might be mad at Earl for some reason, but the claim that Scrubs received better treatment from NBC than 30 Rock is really a bad joke. I mean seriously, the show was moved all over the schedule, aired as a fall show, as a mid-season show, episodes not aired in order, only to not be allowed to finish its run as originally planned. If it hadn’t been for ABC, the show would never have had its proper series finale - and that after seven years and good ratings. If that’s what Baldwin considers good treatment and wants for 30 Rock, then he is fucking crazy.

But what I couldn’t help but thinking, reading those crazy words, was why? Why was he basically insulting everyone who still now works at NBC ? What he is trying to accomplish here ? And when you think back, at him not willing to commit to 22 episodes a year, complaining about the constraint and lack of freedom due to being on network television, wondering whether he should just quit acting altogether, you have to wonder : could he be trying to be let go from the show ?

Maybe he wants his “freedom” back, maybe he wants more time to do other things, but he loves the show, and creator/writer/exec producer/star Tina Fey, and he just doesn’t want to leave the show. But, should those scumbags at the network have him take a (little) break might not be such a terrible idea in his eyes…

I don’t know, what do you guys think : was he simply being honest about those morons who do work at NBC (though asking to have Baldwin on 30 Rock was definitely a good choice), or was there more to it ?

Posted in News
Shows: 30 Rock, My Name Is Earl, Scrubs