Alec Baldwin says his talk show will favor in-depth discussions

Alec Baldwin, whose upcoming ABC talk show will air a preview episode Sunday following the Academy Awards, says he plans to avoid having guests do promotional interviews, in favor of more in-depth discussions.

“The watchword for me is origins,” Baldwin, 59, told The Hollywood Reporter Thursday of “Sundays with Alec Baldwin,” which will have a nine-episode first season formally premiering later this year. “How did they grow up and how were they primed for this kind of work? How did Jerry Seinfeld become Jerry Seinfeld? I think that’s inspiring for artists and performers. I want to get people on there who are political figures and talk about their origins, too.”

The preview will feature comedian Seinfeld — who, like Baldwin, was raised in Massapequa — and “Saturday Night Live” star Kate McKinnon, who grew up in Sea Cliff. Baldwin’s wish list, he said, includes President Barack Obama, novelist Stephen King, actors Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman and musician Bruce Springsteen.

In the preview, Baldwin and Seinfeld discuss the #MeToo movement, which has led to sexual-abuse allegations against some men each know. “What we saw for a while, in my opinion, was people who were perpetrators being exposed,” Baldwin told the trade magazine, adding, “When the community at large runs out of perpetrators, they start to turn on the supporters of the perpetrators because they need more fuel for the fire. The next thing they throw on the fire are the friends of these people who aren’t stepping out and renouncing them. I have suffered from some of that” he said.

He added that, “My inclination to want to defend my friends — who either A) I thought were innocent, which is Woody[Allen] or B) I had no knowledge of what they did and I still have no knowledge of what they did, which is [director James] Toback — is a normal inclination . . . up until the point that they are convicted of something.”

The three-time Emmy Award-winner actor also addressed his short-lived attempt at a similar show, “Up Late with Alec Baldwin,” on MSNBC in 2013, describing differences with a news producer he felt was a poor fit and “wholly unfamiliar with the world of entertainment . . . MSNBC was a horrible marriage and just a really bad experience.”