Arts

The part-time Vermont resident – and full-time classical music buff – narrates for the Boston Symphony Orchestra on Sunday.

“I won the Amory Blaine Handsomeness Scholarship to Princeton, and then attended Harvard Business School, where I was voted ‘Most.’”

“Lemon, I’m not in the mood to solve your lady problems or listen to a story about whatever escapee from the Island of Misfit Toys you’re currently dating.”

“I have to talk to Rachel Maddow. Only one of us can have this haircut.”

Nobody delivers a line quite like Alec Baldwin as Boston’s Jack Donaghy. NBC’s “30 Rock” is comfort food. You find new favorite lines upon every rewatch.  Years after its finale, it nourishes the internet and feeds Twitter its best inspiration. 

Now Baldwin — the line-delivery-master — is narrating at Tanglewood.

When I reach Baldwin, he’s in a car headed from his Manhattan home to Brooklyn for wardrobe fitting for “The Roman.”

The upcoming casino-set Netflix series will become “my entire focus once we get started” filming, he says, describing a bit of the show. 

But first, the classic music super fan and “frustrated conductor” will get his Tanglewood fix.

A part-time New Englander — he and Boston-born wife Hilaria Baldwin have a home in Arlington, Vermont — Baldwin once regularly attended Tanglewood shows as a fan, he says, driving from New York. Now that the Baldwins have seven little kids, trips to Lenox are less frequent. 

“I haven’t been much lately because of all my kids, but when I was a little more available, I’d go to Canyon Ranch and Tanglewood and make a nice weekend of it,” Baldwin says.

This year, though, Baldwin will be taking part in Tanglewood’s special Independence Day weekend program. His recent legal troubles behind him, the Oscar nominee and Emmy winner (“30 Rock”) will be narrating the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait” July 5. 

For the uninitiated, the New York Philharmonic commissioned composers during WWII to create “musical portraits” of eminent Americans. Copland chose Lincoln and incorporated excerpts from letters, speeches, popular folk songs. “Lincoln Portrait” premiered in 1942, with Copland conducting the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and radio personality William Adams narrating.

Baldwin, 68, made his Tanglewood debut in 2010 narrating “The Dream Lives On: A Portrait of the Kennedy Brothers” with the Boston Pops and Keith Lockhart.

The actor obviously has a voice for narration — he narrated Wes Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums” among many other projects. 

We talked Tanglewood, “30 Rock,” Boston accents, “Outside Providence,” Sox games and more.

Boston.com: I’m wondering what draws you to “Lincoln Portrait”?  You just did it in Pasadena, too.

Alec Baldwin: I’m grateful to be invited to anything that involves classical music. I don’t play any instruments. I’m a frustrated conductor. I wish I’d studied music and became a conductor. I’d do that tomorrow rather than what I’m doing for a living. 

There’s not [much narration work] in the classical repertoire. [I’ve done] “Peter and the Wolf,” “The Soldier’s Tale.” I started to work with the Phil in New York, maybe 17 years now — I’m on the board of the symphony; I’m the announcer on their recorded programs on WQXR, The New York Philharmonic this week. 

I’m the batboy for the New York Philharmonic. I don’t play the game, but I’m there on the periphery.

[laughs] Right.

I think this year marks 40 years that I’ve had a pretty steady obsession with classical music.

What got you into it?

The music on the radio just didn’t speak to me anymore. I was rounding the corner toward 30. Popular music was kind of trite. I came from Beatles, Zeppelin, Stones, The Who —  stuff from the ’70s when I was a kid. This [’80s] music, I didn’t really care for. I turned on KCRW in LA and the very first piece that I heard was Mahler ninth with Solti and the Chicago, and I just never turned back. I just love it.

You’ve got New England ties, too. You have a home in Vermont.

My wife stayed for a few years with her grandfather [David Lloyd Thomas, Sr.] up in the Arlington area. We would love to have gone further up — because I think the further up you go, the nicer it is —  but with seven children, the drive is long enough at four hours.

I bet. Your wife also grew up partly in Boston. 

She’s from Boston. She was born and raised in Boston, but pivoted back and forth between Boston and Spain for the entire 12 years of her school education. Her parents didn’t want them just to be raised in the United States, so she and her brother were over there half a year for 12 years. She’s on her way to Spain, shortly, with my kids to go see her parents.

Nice. And speaking of Boston, you do a solid Boston accent — not many non-natives can do it. Is there a trick to it?

Well, whenever you’re around people from Boston, they’re fairly fond of tearing down your Boston accent. A lot of Bostonians I know — actors especially — are like, “You know, your voice in that movie was terrible. You don’t sound anything like you’re from Boston.”

[laughs] I can see that.

Having done “The Departed”  — Mark Wahlberg and [Matt] Damon were like, “Ehhh, close. You’re getting closer.”

[laughs] Do you study with someone?

We have dialect coaches. Brooks Baldwin, I worked with here in New York. Tim Monich, he’s great. Jessica Drake is great. You realize you’re always coming up short.  They say, “Remember, you got to hit that word that way.”  A person to give you those notes, it’s very helpful.

And it takes time. You had to walk around talking in that dialect. So if I’m doing a play, and it’s an English accent, I’m on the phone [breaks into posh English accent] “Would you like to have lunch? Oh, really? No? You don’t want to have lunch?  You don’t have time? Well, I apologize.” And your friend’s like, “Would you shut the hell up? What are you doing?”

[laughs] Right. The Rhode Island accent is so close to Boston. You nailed it in  “Outside Providence.”

Oh God. 

I love that movie. I’m thinking of the line, “You hit a paahked caahhp cah?”

Oh God, that movie was so funny. Those guys [RI’s Farrelly Brothers] were so funny. We had a lot of fun. The other actors were a lot of fun. If I did even a remotely competent Rhode Island accident, that’s a miracle from God. 

[laughs]

I don’t know how to distinguish Boston from Rhode Island at all.

They’re almost the same, and that’s why I think you did it well. You played it close to Boston. A lot of actors don’t realize how similar they are.

Are you from Rhode Island?

Yes.

Oh, I love Rhode Island. I loved shooting there. We were there to shoot “The Last Shot” — the original name was, I think, “Providence.” Jeff Nathanson directed me, Toni Collette, Matthew Broderick in this very dry, funny movie. 

Everyone said, “Oh, you gotta go to Caserta’s for pizza. So I go, and a guy goes, [breaks into Rhode Island accent] “So, Alec. Ya heah makin’ a movie?” I go, “Yes.” “And you’re staying at the Blah Blah Hotel?”  I go, “Yes.” [laughs] News spreads fast. This guy knew more about my accommodations than I did. What room am I in?

[laughs] That’s very Rhode Island. So I need to ask about “30 Rock.” It seems almost more popular now — there are times when my Twitter feed is just all 30 Rock lines. I’ve rewatched endlessly and always pick up new lines. Do you have any favorite quotes?

I have so many, but just to pick one [pause] … You know, we’d do a read-through for the producers, the heads of all the departments, on camera — they’d beam it to executives in LA. We’d sit down every Wednesday during lunch break and do the read-through of next week’s script. 

One morning, they hand me the script. I go into the read-through later on, I see Robert Carlock,  the other head writer with Tina [Fey]. I go, “Robert, are you out of your mind? What are you doing? I can’t play a gay Mexican soap opera star.”

[laughs] “Generalissimo.”

And I’m doing it Patty Duke-style — I’m playing against myself! I was like, “You guys are crazy.” He’s like, “Alec, it’s a big swing, but we have faith in you. It’s a big swing, but we have faith.” He’d say the same thing all the time. “We have faith in you.” They want me to go out there and play a gay Mexican soap star. Ridiculous. 

When you were making the show, did you know how funny it was?

The first year, no. I’m not a comedian. I distinguish it as: comedians write their material; they do stand-up. If you’re funny, you write it. I’m an actor; I don’t write it. So I never thought of myself as funny. I can say a line in a funny way — if someone else is writing that line. 

So that first year I was terrified. Terrified. To be in a room with those people — who were the funniest people I’ve ever known — I was embarrassed. I thought “I’m not as good as them.” By the second season, I started to get a bit more comfortable.

We talked about shooting in Rhode Island. Any favorite Boston-filming memories?

The best time was when we shot the movie “State and Main” with David Mamet [directing], Sarah Jessica Parker, and all these people shooting in Boston. Matthew Broderick [Parker’s husband] came up and we went to the Red Sox game. We did catch a fair amount of s— from the Boston fans who knew we were from New York. They were not necessarily nice to us.

[laughs] Classic. I love that Donaghy is from Boston. A few episodes play off that, and there were also always great Boston jokes. 

It’s like Conan O’Brien says: “Yeah, I was in a gang in Boston. We had a uniform: We all wore sweaters with an alligator on it.” Donaghy did not grow up with any money, but he understood that crowd — the privileged Brahmin uppercrust. He hung out with that crowd and ran with that crowd and absorbed everything they had and knew. But he wasn’t one of them.

He was always a guy who — sometimes with subtlety and sometimes without much subtlety — was always displaying things that related to them: his fine books and his vases. There was a little bit of that trying to prove to people that he was one of them. And he’s not. Of course, the key to that is his relationship with his mother. 

True. That must’ve been amazing, working with Elaine Stritch.

She was amazing. I loved her to death. And I learned something profound from her: She would blow the take. Take one, take two, take three, take four. She acted like it was accidental, like she was tripping on the lines — but she was lying. She was buying herself rehearsal. So by the time you got to take five, she got better, and by take seven, she nailed it.

Wow.

I thought that was thrilling. Thrilling. I learned so much. She was such a great technician that way, with comedy and timing. She was so encouraging, and she was very dear friends with Noel Coward. She said to me, “Alec, you’ve got to do Coward one day. Noel’s material is the greatest material. You’d be beautiful in it. Of course, you’d have to drop 20 pounds.”

[laughs] That’s what Jack’s mother would say to Jack. 

Oh my God. She was a lovable nightmare.

Interview has been edited and condensed. Lauren Daley is a freelance culture writer. She can be reached at [email protected]. She tweets @laurendaley1, and Instagrams at @laurendaley1. Read more stories on Facebook here.

Lauren Daley

Lauren Daley is a longtime culture journalist. As a regular contributor to Boston.com, she interviews A-list musicians, actors, authors and other major artists.

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