Two years since the conclusion of NBC’s 30 Rock and one year removed from resolving to walk away from both public life and New York City, Alec Baldwin is headed back to TV, ironically as the fictional mayor of the city that scorned him.
Shortly after being fired from his MSNBC gig in 2013 for using homophobic slurs, Baldwin penned a lengthy essay to New York Magazine’s Vulture blog, wherein he stated he would be walking away from the city he loved and a career he had spent decades building.
While he never really went away, Baldwin is now “back” and slated to both star in and produce his first major television project in two years, in a yet-to-be titled series for Universal Television and HBO.
Set to star as Joe Byrne, a billionaire real estate developer and philanthropist who is also a celebrated socialite, Baldwin’s character is unexpectedly catapulted into New York politics after tragedy strikes the incumbent mayor and he is forced to replace him, reports Deadline.
The hour-long drama will reportedly explore the celebrity and the political landscape of New York City, “dark but not as pitch black as House Of Cards,” per Deadline, and will aspire to capture the tone of the lighter side of The Sopranos.
Baldwin will play a “larger-than-life divorced entrepreneur whose burst into the political spotlight is made interesting by his appetite for women and a dark past.”
He told Deadline:
The character is a philanthropist, a big businessman and well-known tabloid fixture in New York… He’s Trump without the baggage, Bloomberg but a Democrat, George Soros if he was in real estate, a left-leaning Democrat who is also a businessman who understands the reality of how the city has to be run to create the right climate for the business community.
The actor once had aspirations to run for mayor of New York City. He told the New York Times in 2011: “What I think the government should be doing, who I think government should be serving, and in what way and what it should be prioritizing is a lot different than people would think.”
As for his then-support of embattled congressman Anthony Weiner, the potential candidate stated: “sexual scandal, to me, is meaningless.”
Considering the character’s description, Baldwin might be a perfect fit for the new role.
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