Actor doesn’t want skit to air after producers cut his phone-hacking joke

Sep 19, 2011 10:34 GMT  ·  By
Alec Baldwin pulls out of the Emmys 2011 telecast after joke on Rupert Murdoch is cut
   Alec Baldwin pulls out of the Emmys 2011 telecast after joke on Rupert Murdoch is cut

One of the stars most notably absent at last night’s Emmy Awards was Alec Baldwin. Though he had pre-taped a segment for the opening number with host Jane Lynch, he asked to not have it aired after he was told a joke about Rupert Murdoch would be cut.

As we also noted earlier today, Lynch kicked off the night with a music segment, which opened with her in a meeting with the “President of Television,” played by iconic “Star Trek” actor Leonard Nimoy.

Word in the blogosphere has it that the skit was first shot with Baldwin as the “President,” but he asked to have it axed after he was told one of his jokes would not make the cut.

Entertainment Weekly reports that the joke in question was about media mogul Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp, which owned the now-defunct News of the World tabloid and Fox.

“Alec Baldwin has pulled out of [the] Emmy telecast after a joke about News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch was cut from a segment that he had recorded to open the broadcast,” EW writes.

Baldwin himself confirmed reports in the media ahead of the Emmys, taking to his official Twitter page to say that he had, indeed, taped a segment, but would not appear in the opening number because producers had axed one of his jokes.

“I did a short Emmy pretape a few days ago. Now they tell me NewsCorp may cut the funniest line,” the actor tweeted.

“Fox did kill my NewsCorp hacking joke. Which sucks bc I think it would have made them look better. A little,” he added.

While it could be easy to conclude that the joke was cut because NewsCorp was out to protect its own interests by not having a well-known actor make fun of its CEO on one of the telecasts from its own network, EW says the decision came from the Emmy producers.

“When EW talked to Fox, the network was very clear that the decision to cut the joke was made at the Fox level – not by anyone at News Corp,” the publication writes.

“Fox also claims that the reason the joke was cut was not because of Murdoch’s name, but because it was in poor taste to make light of the serious allegations surrounding the phone-hacking scandal,” EW adds.