Alec Baldwin on Tuesday explained to the Gothamist what led to his departure from MSNBC after the actor yelled a gay slur at paparazzi outside of his home.
“Martin Bashir’s on the air, and he made his comment on the air! I dispute half the comment I made… if I called him ‘cocksucking maggot’ or a ‘cocksucking motherfucker’… ‘faggot’ is not the word that came out of my mouth. That I know,” Baldwin told the Gothamist. “But you’ve got the fundamentalist wing of gay advocacy—Rich Ferraro and Andrew Sullivan—they’re out there, they’ve got you. Rich Ferraro, this is probably one of his greatest triumphs. They killed my show. And I have to take some responsibility for that myself.”
Baldwin placed some blame on TMZ, the site that posted the video of Baldwin yelling at the photographer.
“Showing a video in which I call someone a ‘cocksucking something’… you can’t really tell what I’m saying, and we live in a world in which the phrase ‘TMZ’s enhanced audio’ exists,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do when you get thrown in this washing machine, nothing. You know? Nothing. All you end up doing is just defending yourself all day long.”
