Director insists that suit-wearing baby in new film who says trademark phrase and is voiced by SNL impersonator Alec Baldwin is a product of coincidence

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The director of animated film The Boss Baby has said it is a “total coincidence” that the title character reminds audiences of Donald Trump.



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The suit-wearing baby says Trump’s trademark phrase – “You’re fired” – and is voiced by Alec Baldwin, who has become the nation’s top Trump impersonator on Saturday Night Live.

Director Tom McGrath, who is best known for his work on the Madagascar franchise, said comparisons between his title character and the president were “a gift or a nightmare, I don’t know”.

Ahead of the release of The Boss Baby on Friday, reviews pondered whether the suit-wearing baby was meant to be a version of Trump.

Stop saying every piece of art is about Trump. Only Boss Baby is about Trump, said Vulture.

The Boss Baby review: this is not the Trump-trolling toon you’re looking for, proclaimed Rolling Stone.

Is The Boss Baby really a cartoon about an infant Donald Trump? asked Vanity Fair.

It’s in no way based on Trump. It's based on an immature, sometimes greedy businessman Tom McGrath

Vanity Fair concluded that the baby chief executive and Trump did not have enough in common for their resemblance to be intentional.

“This [baby’s] level of competence makes it abundantly clear: this really isn’t a Trump parody at all,” it said.

McGrath told the Hollywood Reporter the “you’re fired” line and other similarities were “a total coincidence”.

“There’s an overlap in ‘business guy’ tropes but no, it’s in no way based on Trump,” he said. “It’s based on an immature, sometimes greedy businessman, so if people want to draw their own conclusions about that … but no, it really wasn’t.”

McGrath said most of the film, which is based on a children’s book, was written in 2012, and most of the animation was completed before Trump became “a serious contender” for president.

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He said Baldwin’s SNL role was “an extra weird coincidence”.

“I guess people can find that connection amusing but I don’t think that if you go looking for a political statement in the movie there really is one,” he said.

“If it makes people interested in seeing the movie, I’m glad. If it distracts people from what the movie is really about, then I’m sad.”

Author Marla Frazee, who wrote the book that inspired the film, told the Hollywood Reporter that Baldwin’s roles on SNL and in Boss Baby “resonate on so many levels”.

Frazee said: “I’m not quite sure that this is how I would have wanted the country’s trajectory to go, but yes the echoes are very much unbelievable.”