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You’d be forgiven for not watching The Baldwins, the just-concluded TLC reality series about Alec and Hilaria Baldwin and all their children. This is because it was exactly the thing you assumed it to be.
On one hand, The Baldwins desperately wanted to be a show in the traditional TLC mould; a zany happy-go-lucky series about the chaos of raising an enormous family. But on the other, it was also about what happened on the set of Rust in 2021. And so every wack-a-doodle moment of family fun found itself being counterbalanced with the explicit acknowledgment that Alec Baldwin fatally shot cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in an accident that caused untold pain to countless people and has cast a long dark shadow over Baldwin’s career.
For example, Sunday night’s episode of The Baldwins (entitled You’re My 30 Rock) served as the season finale, and revolved in part around the state of Alec’s health. At one point Hilaria clambered on to her husband while he was stretching and half-jokingly told him: “You hold trauma in your shoulders,” and, well, that probably sounds about right, given everything.
Baldwin went on to say that his health has suffered since the shooting, and as such his energy has been depleted. The emotional toll of the Rust fallout, combined with the fact that his wife is a health nut 26 years his junior, has made him more determined than ever to get into shape. Specifically, the shape he was when he made Blue Jasmine.
Blue Jasmine came out 12 years ago, and Baldwin – mainly seen in flashbacks, as Cate Blanchett’s husband who was arrested for fraud and then killed himself in prison – did look remarkably slender in it. His secret? “I didn’t have no pasta, no potatoes, no candy, no sugar, and I lost probably 25lbs [10kg],” he said. “You see me in the movie and I look trim, comparatively speaking.”
Which isn’t to say that Baldwin got in shape specifically for Blue Jasmine, because that would be crazy. Traditionally body transformation like this is reserved for the big roles. Tom Hanks slimmed down for Castaway because he was in every scene of an incredibly ambitious movie for which he found himself nominated for an Oscar. De Niro bulked up for Raging Bull because the audiences needed to see how far his character had fallen. Meanwhile, Alec Baldwin had a bit part in a Woody Allen film, which probably isn’t worth completely denying yourself all sugar and carbohydrates for an extended period of time.
Indeed, interviews from the time suggest that Baldwin slimmed down less because it was integral to his character and more because he was diagnosed as pre-diabetic, and his high-sugar diet left him “exhausted” and “swollen”. Nevertheless, he did seem incredibly proud of losing weight; during a 2012 Letterman appearance he literally dropped his trousers onstage to show how badly they fit him.
Still, the transformation wasn’t an especially dramatic one, given the extremes he went to. He still looked exactly like Alec Baldwin, just an Alec Baldwin who was moderately thinner than the Alec Baldwin from 2010.
Things have (very understandably) slipped a little in the last few years, but the main thing is that Alec Baldwin has a goal again. Nobody knows if he’ll ever return to acting and, while The Baldwins might have been made out of financial necessity, it would be a surprise if anyone – including him – is eager for more. If getting back into shape is the thing that will finally bring him some peace, then that’s what he should concentrate on. Only this time it’d be nice if he could drop his trousers behind closed doors, please.
