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For the second show in a row, Jimmy Fallon didn’t have to leave 30 Rock to find his main guest. After welcoming Late Night host Seth Meyers Wednesday (the Saturday Night Live veterans discussed their respective Donald Trump tactics), Fallon sat down Thursday with Alec Baldwin, whose Trump impression is partly responsible for SNL currently experiencing its highest-rated season in 22 years (The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and SNL are all executive produced by Lorne Michaels). Tomorrow, Baldwin will host his record-breaking 17th episode of the comedy-variety series.
Fallon began by complimenting Baldwin’s attire — a black suit with a lilac shirt and matching pocket square — which the actor quipped was “from the Ivanka Trump collection at Nordstrom’s. They’re having a big sale right — 95 percent off of everything.” The department store announced on February 2nd that it would cease selling Ivanka Trump merchandise this fall, prompting a tweet from President Trump and an ethically-questionable “free commercial” on Fox & Friends yesterday from his counselor, Kellyanne Conway, which included this directive: “Go buy Ivanka’s stuff.” On Wednesday, the day of Trump’s tweet, Nordstrom’s stock climbed four percent.
Baldwin’s light-hearted appearance continued with Fallon revealing previously unaired footage of the duo accompanying a laugh-crippled Barbra Streisand through a song this past August. When Fallon took the opportunity to plug Baldwin’s forthcoming memoir, Nevertheless, Baldwin gently mocked Fallon’s own history as an author — he penned the best-selling 2015 children’s book, Your Baby’s First Word Will Be Dada, which Baldwin called a “probing, insightful, like incredibly honed and researched treatise on parenthood.” But Fallon was ready with a retort: “At least you know I definitely wrote it, though. I didn’t have like a ghostwriter write Dada.” Baldwin concluded the segment with an anecdote he heard from Harry Potter‘s Dumbledore, Michael Gambon, which inspired his title.
Following a commercial break, Baldwin was back for a game of Box of Lies (the players try to convince each other of the contents hidden within). Confronted with a surgical glove, filled with pimento olives, wearing a wedding band, Fallon laughed, “If we don’t get the Emmy this year, we’ve done something horribly wrong.” Then he and his competitor unleashed dueling Trump impressions with lots of squinting and splayed fingers (the highlight: Baldwin’s Trump describing a banana-filled burrito).
Celebrities hoping to join Baldwin on SNL this weekend include his friend and fellow Long Island native, Rosie O’Donnell (who transformed herself into Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, for her Twitter profile picture), and future star of The Good Fight Christine Baranski, who told Vanity Fair that she’d suit up as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Slate went ahead and paired every Trump cabinet member with the female starlet who should play the character on the Studio 8H stage.
