ALEC Baldwin’s Saturday Night Live star turn as Donald Trump has turned the respected actor into an internet sensation — but in a new interview, Baldwin admits that depicting the US President was the last thing he wanted to do.

In a new interview with Howard Stern, the 59-year-old 30 Rock star revealed that he initially rejected SNL producer Lorne Michaels’ pleas to take on the daunting task.

It was only when his other plans fell through that he decided to take on the role.

“It was last summer, and I was supposed to do a film with a lot of people I liked and respected. I worship Woody Harrelson, and I was going to work with him,” he told Stern.

“The producers were supposed to escrow the money in an account, because it was an indie, not a studio film. People don’t realise — studios have bags of money, but if you do an indie, you’ve got to set up the money,” he said.

The low budget film’s producers were having trouble fronting up the money when Michaels called with a request from SNL.

“Lorne calls me: ‘You wanna play Trump? Come on this season, play Trump. It’ll be like Tina with Palin,’” he recalled.

“I go, ‘I don’t want to f**king play Trump’. Who wants to f**king do that?”

But the producers of the indie film still couldn’t front up with the money needed to secure Baldwin’s services, meaning he had an unexpected block of free time.

“They want me to pretend they have the money — and I’ve been down that road before. I’m not doing the movie, so I call up Lorne and say ‘I’m Trump, let’s go’.”

Baldwin said he prepared for the role by watching hours of Trump clips on YouTube, but laid most of the praise with the SNL writers.

“The key to it is the writing. I’ll talk to [the writers] ... I said to them the other day, let me be Trump on air force One, and they’ll come and pull me off the flight like it’s United.”

Now, the role he didn’t “want to f**king play” is earning Baldwin perhaps the biggest buzz of his career — and he says the reaction he’s experiencing from the public is “not to be believed.”

“You realise, ironically, that people love you because you’re channelling their hatred. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”