Alec Baldwin Is 'So Done' Portraying Donald Trump on 'SNL' : 'I Can't Imagine I Would Do It Again'

The actor has parodied the president on the variety show since 2016

Alec Baldwin has had enough.

The actor, who has famously portrayed Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live since the 2016 presidential election, revealed in a recent interview that he is “so done” with the role and “can’t imagine” returning to the show next season.

“I feel like I’m done with that now. I’m so done with that,” Baldwin, 61, told USA Today in an interview published on Thursday, after explaining that he felt like the role had lost some of its freshness.

“I mean, I had a lot of fun with (the cast), and when Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider wrote [Trump sketches in 2016 and 2017], that was new, it was fresh and the ratings were good,” he said.

When the outlet asked who he’d have replace him as Trump, 72, on the Emmy-winning sketch comedy show, Baldwin suggested Anthony Atamanuik, who has been performing his own parody of Trump on Comedy Central’s The President Show.

“If [Atamanuik] wants the job, it’s his. He can have it,” Baldwin said.

Will Heath/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty

Baldwin revealed that after Atamanuik started his impersonation, viewers told him that they didn’t like his version of Trump.

“All these people were attacking me, saying, ‘Oh, your impression sucks and you suck. Please go away,'” Baldwin said. “It also was something I thought to myself: ‘I really don’t have a lot invested in my Trump impersonation, so please find someone and convince Lorne [Michaels, SNL‘s creator and executive producer] to replace me.’ I’m completely down with that. Winning the Emmy for that show aside, it was not some career goal of mine.”

Baldwin won an Emmy for his performance of Trump on the variety show in 2017.

Hilaria Baldwin/Instagram

In addition to being open to other comedians performing as Trump, Baldwin said he’s ready to work on other projects as he balances work with family life.

“I can’t imagine I would do it again. I just can’t,” he said. “They should find somebody who wants to do it. They’re all my dear friends and I love going there, but the other thing is that I’m going to go to work this fall in a way I haven’t done in a while.”

“My wife and I had a son a year ago, and since he was born, I’ve worked minimally because I wanted to be there for my wife and kids,” he added. “But the party’s over this fall and I’ll be traveling. SNL just crushes my weekends, and now weekends are going to become much more precious to me because that’s time with my kids.”

Alec and Hilaria Baldwin. Steven Ferdman/Getty

Baldwin recently opened up to PEOPLE in this week’s issue, out now, about his scuffles with the paparazzi since the ’90s.

“The most essential thing to say about that, which always hurts my feelings, is this notion that the incidents I’ve had where I’ve had ugly encounters with people — typically tabloid photographers and paparazzi — is that it happened unprovoked,” Baldwin says.

“The ones who almost knock my wife’s teeth out with their lens while they’re crowding us in front of our building, they throw the camera in my wife’s face and intimidate her and harass her,” Baldwin says. “I made a decision years ago — and I’m not proud of this decision — I said to myself, I’m going to make my own rules, not wait for the cops to come down here and take care of me. I have to do what I have to do, and it’s led to some very, very ugly things, but all of them have been provoked by people who have harassed and intimidated me or my family.”

However, Baldwin understands that most photographers are doing their jobs.

“I don’t want to go like Trump and say the press is the enemy of the people,” Baldwin says. “There’s the legitimate press and there’s the tabloid press. The media is a business. I don’t fault anyone that.”

SNL is currently on hiatus and returns to NBC in the fall.