Though Alec Baldwin has debated leaving 30 Rock several times since 2006, the actor isn't quite ready to leave the award-winning comedy.
"I offered NBC to cut my pay 20 percent in order to have a full 7th and 8th seasons of 30 Rock," he tweeted October 4, the same day the show's seventh and final season premieres. "I realize times have changed."
Series creator and costar Tina Fey, 42, recently opened up about Baldwin's highly publicized contract negotiations in an Entertainment Weekly cover story. "You can't control things by being nervous about it. There definitely were times where I expressed to him how I would very much like him to do it and how important it was to me — and if he thought we were going to continue without him, we would not."
"But I think by season 3 [we knew he was staying]," Fey said of Baldwin, 54. "I had a dinner with him when I was very pregnant with my second child [Penelope, 13 months] to say, 'Let's do season 7, come on. Let's do it!' And he said okay. I think I had the baby the next day. And now not a day goes by that he doesn't go around to the crew and agitate for a season 8: 'You've gotta change your minds!' It's like, 'It's not really up to me — and also, no.'"
Baldwin won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series in 2007 and 2008 for his role as network executive Jack Donaghy.
The final season of 30 Rock, also starring Tracy Morgan, 43, Jane Krakowski, 43, and Jack McBrayer, 39, will have 13 episodes. It premieres Thursday, October 4, at 8 p.m. EST on NBC and will wrap up in December.
