Darrell Hammond admits he 'didn't like' Alec Baldwin taking over as Donald Trump on “SNL” (exclusive)
- - Darrell Hammond admits he 'didn't like' Alec Baldwin taking over as Donald Trump on “SNL” (exclusive)
Joey NolfiNovember 13, 2025 at 10:48 PM
0
Dana Edelson/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty; Will Heath/NBC/NBCU Photobank/Getty
Darrell Hammond as Donald Trump; Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump on 'SNL'Key Points -
Darrell Hammond reflects on Alec Baldwin taking over as Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live.
The comedian admits to EW he "didn't like" the transition at the time.
"I know Lorne Michaels is a tough guy, but he's not cruel," he says.
Nearly a decade after Saturday Night Live elected Alec Baldwin as his replacement to play Donald Trump on the NBC sketch show in 2016, Darrell Hammond admits he wasn't particularly fond of the shakeup.
The comedy staple tells Entertainment Weekly that, at the time, he accepted creator and longtime SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels's "creative business decision" to end his run as Trump on the air, which he'd fronted between 1999 and 2011, in addition to playing Trump throughout various early stages of the 2015-2016 presidential election cycle.
"I know Lorne Michaels is a tough guy, but he's not cruel. I don't think he would've done that unless he felt like he had to," Hammond explains. "At the time, social media was emerging, YouTube was happening, there was a need to go viral every week. He made that creative decision, and it paid off."
Dana Edelson/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty
Darrell Hammond as Donald Trump on 'Saturday Night Live'
Still, Hammond maintains, "No, I didn't like it, but it's the NFL, man. Saturday Night Live, for all its frivolity and hilarity, it's not the March of Dimes, it's a business."
"That was tough," he continues, "but every effort was made to explain things to me that it wasn't done haphazardly or cruelly.
In fact, Hammond remains a fixture on the program. After exiting as a full-time cast member in 2009, he was hired back as the show's announcer in 2014 following the death of longtime announcer Don Pardo, a post he still holds today.
Yet, Hammond says, while he "spoke briefly recently" with show personnel about potentially playing an on-camera role this season, "no one has talked to me about playing a part on the show" in the near future.
The 70-year-old, who also portrayed political figures like Al Gore and the late Dick Cheney on SNL, also responds in his EW interview to a 2018 social media message from Trump in which the president called for Hammond to be reinstated as his resident impersonator on the show because he's a "funnier" and "far greater talent" than Baldwin.
Alec Baldwin, whose dying mediocre career was saved by his terrible impersonation of me on SNL, now says playing me was agony. Alec, it was agony for those who were forced to watch. Bring back Darrell Hammond, funnier and a far greater talent!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 2, 2018
"I think if a president tweets about you and suddenly Vladimir Putin knows your name, you've stepped into history somewhere. My mouth was on the floor. I couldn't believe it," Hammond says, before joking, "The first thing I thought was, now the Kremlin is going, 'Who is this guy?' Looking me up. That's a long way from the Little League fields I grew up on. I graduated college with a 2.1 and there were five presidents calling me by my first name [while I was on SNL], I feel like I did pretty good."
Dana Edelson/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty
Donald Trump hosting 'Saturday Night Live' in 2015
Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.
Hammond also tells EW that Cheney liked his impersonations so much that he once invited the entertainer to perform at a Republican retreat as Bill Clinton. "The guy had a sense of humor," he insists of Cheney, who died on Nov. 3 at age 84.
"I still remember his hand pounding on the table when I said this joke as Bill Clinton. I haven't done Clinton in a while, but the joke was, 'Boy, that Dick Cheney, with his heart condition and that electronic pacemaker? Every time he sneezes, the garage door opens,'" Hammond recalls. "I remember him pounding on the table, and I thought, Wow, he's generous with his time."
Entertainment Weekly has reached out to representatives for SNL for comment.
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
