Back in 2011, Alec Baldwin toyed with the idea of running for Mayor of New York City. Maybe toyed isn’t the right word. He thought about it enough to give interviews and discuss his philosophy on governing.
\“There are people who make a lot of money who become rich people, and then there are people who make a lot of money, but they don’t think like rich people do,” he said at the time. “No matter how much money they have, they are the same from their own upbringing. I would definitely put myself in the latter class.”
“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.”
But Alec Baldwin never did run for mayor, at least not yet. But he gets the chance to play one on TV.
The show does not have a title yet, but Alec Baldwin will play a billionaire real estate developer named Joe Byrne who becomes Mayor of New York.
“The character is a philanthropist, a big businessman and well-known tabloid fixture in New York,” Baldwin said recently. “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 show will have a pilot to test the waters, but would be carried on HBO if picked up. Alec Baldwin feels like there is a lot of room to work in the political genre.
“We’ve seen from shows like Kevin Spacey’s House Of Cards that you can go anywhere creatively,” Baldwin said. “He throws Kate Mara’s character in front of a subway train and you think, what the hell is going on? You can create these Shakespearean character arcs, and pull the curtain back on how New York City is actually run and how political careers are made and lost in the city.”