From the New York Times:

The Emmy-winning actor is in the mix for a spot in NBC’s late-night lineup, one executive involved in the network’s program planning said. The executive asked not to be identified because the talks were still in initial stages.

The most likely landing place for a show hosted by Mr. Baldwin would be in the latest of NBC’s entries, the show now called “Last Call.” That half-hour interview program currently stars Carson Daly.

The news comes in the midst of an industry-wide late night show reshuffling, as Jimmy Fallon was recently tapped as Jay Leno's replacement on "Tonight," Leno is rumored to go to Fox, and Seth Myers is speculated to take Fallon's spot on "Late Night."

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The actors, both known for hot tempers, were to co-star in the 1983 Broadway play -- until "tensions as men" prompted LaBeouf's firing. LaBeouf retaliated by exposing private emails between himself and the cast, citing creative differences in February.

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So what is it about Timberlake that makes us want him to come back to the Studio 8H every chance he gets? Andy Samberg helped him tap into it, for sure, creating sketches for him as his wingman, allowing him to showcase a charming, suave, cool, self-mocking douche — which he does exceedingly well. Samberg turns up here for two sketches — but, missed opportunity alert: There is no new digital short. (Don't tell me Patricia Clarkson and Susan Sarandon weren't around!)

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Baldwin, as the guy we want to believe in, is a little bit of perfection. In his career, he's gone from a heartbreakingly hot piece of Grade-A beefcake to Oscar-nominated leading man to iconic "Saturday Night Live" host to subversively brilliant, Emmy award-winning sitcom star -- all while championing the causes of liberal politics and animal rights that make our knees go weak. Frankly, if all he had going for him were the ridiculous blue eyes and his deadpan delivery of the phrase "Schweddy balls," he'd outrank roughly 80 percent of the planet on the coolness scale.

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The actor, who was set to star alongside Alec Baldwin in "Orphans," has left the production, according to a press release issued by the producers.

The release reads: "Due to creative differences, the producers of 'Orphans' and Shia LaBeouf will be parting ways and he will not be continuing with the production. An announcement on the replacement for the role of 'Treat' will be made shortly." The production is still slated to open on April 7.

LaBeouf has published screenshots of several emails apparently exchanged between himself and other members of the production to his Twitter account. These include an emailed apology from LaBeouf to Baldwin for "a disagreeable situation," in which LaBeouf writes: "A man can tell you he was wrong. That he did wrong... He can apologize, even if sometimes it's just to put an end to the bickering."

"I don't have an unkind word to say about you," writes "AB" in an email back to LaBeouf, noting, "I've been through this before."

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On Tuesday, his former "30 Rock" costar and comedian Tracy Morgan called a North Carolina radio show to talk about it.

Baldwin is being accused of calling black photographer G.N. Miller a "crackhead" and a "coon" after a verbal altercation with a reporter from the Post.

In the interview, Morgan sounds quiet and cautious while chastising Baldwin, saying, "If he called somebody a coon, he should apologize." Adding, "There’s no excuse. You’re in your 50s.”

Morgan is no stranger to hate speech controversy. In 2011, the comedian caught serious heat in the press after a homophobic rant during a stand-up set went public.

He has since apologized.

The New York Police Department's Hate Crime Task Force is currently investigating Baldwin's tirade.

Audio of Morgan's radio appearance below.

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Baldwin told Yakas, "If you want to paint a picture of me that is a denigrating picture, I've seen that. If you want to put words in my mouth...I've certainly had my moments. But this is not one of them. I don't think I've ever uttered a racial epithet to someone in my lifetime."

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“30 Rock,” in its own way, agreed that TV was an occasionally glorious and largely degraded medium. But instead of pontificating about it, its dedicated band of writers and comedians spent seven years mocking, skewering, filleting, and satirizing TV and the TV business, cleverly laying open its stupidity and venality in thousands upon thousands of brilliant jokes from  “MILF Island” to NBC’s just recently revealed policy of giving its employees flush buddies to save water. “30 Rock” was honest — or over-the-top surreal and ridiculous, if you prefer — about TV’s dark side, but by its very existence it endlessly refuted, just like Kenneth the Page, that crap was all there could be.

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And now that dreaded night has arrived: The last episode airs tonight, and before it does, we'd like to share the hilarious fantasies of how our favorite TV sitcom wraps up:

Patton Oswalt, stand-up comedian, actor and author of "Zombie Spaceship Wasteland." 

What happens in the last episode of "30 Rock"?  Easy.  Jack and Liz get together.  That’s what it says here in the script they sent me.  I play the minister who marries them in the final scene.  Wait, am I not supposed to be revealing this?

Rachel Shukert, author of the forthcoming novel "Starstruck":

My fantasy is that Tina Fey will break the fourth wall during the "30 Rock" series finale and tell us that the last year has been a total fake-out and the show isn’t ending at all. But this seems unlikely. Still, it feels only appropriate for a show so unabashedly about the glories (and failures) of television itself to take inspiration from the great series finales of the past. So here goes.

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Jack Donaghy, on life:

Never go with a hippie to a second location.

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BONUS: Relive the magic of this, the perfect scene from the perfect "30 Rock" episode.

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Actually, better business than usual.

SNL brought the winning combo of having a beloved alum Martin Short host the year's penultimate "SNL" (or the last one ever, if the Mayans are to be believed), and a Beatle! And the writers and cast really brought it. Alum shows tend to have a gaggle of surprise guests anyway, but with every celebrity on Earth in New York for the 12-12-12 Sandy relief concert, this one packed heavier than usual star power.

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It's an emotional time for Baldwin, with "30 Rock" now careening toward its ending and a strange stalker case hanging over his head. But that didn't stop Peyser this week from banging out a unique defense of Baldwin's alleged stalker, Genevieve Sabourin. Sabourin, who is accused of sending harassing emails and showing up uninvited at Baldwin's homes, was arrested recently for allegedly violating an order of protection issued last spring. (She was released soon after.) But in Peyser's version of events, "Alec toyed with Genevieve’s womanly affections, treating her to a one-night stand like some kind of cheap whore. Now she wants to expose him for what he is: a cad … Hey, Alec, she says you slept with her! Deal with it, creep."

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You know the drill: A storefront real-estate office in Chicago gets jacked of it prime leads, setting in motion a buzzard’s den of penny-ante salesmen who argue, whine and eventually knife each other in the back to survive, just like they do in the cubicle farms that grow the worst in human relations.

This harsh allegory of modern-day capitalism is not for the frail. New York Magazine critic John Simon famously freaked out on the play, calling it “reprehensible, immoral” because Mamet “enjoys his characters too much, that he revels in their brazen, agile crookedness.”

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This summer, despite (or because of) the clichéd cover image of a toddler stuffed into a woman’s briefcase, Anne-Marie Slaughter’s “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” was an instant sensation, attracting 1.7 million visitors to The Atlantic’s website and generating an all-time high of 200,000 Facebook recommendations. Other attention getters: Kate Bolick’s “All the Single Ladies” (November 2011), an exploration of the current state of unmarried womanhood; Lori Gottlieb’s “Marry Him!” (March 2008), an argument that women should settle for Mr. So-So lest they end up like Kate Bolick; Hanna Rosin’s “The End of Men” (July/August 2010), which presented evidence that women are outstripping men in higher education and on the job market; Rosin’s self-explanatory “The Case Against Breast-Feeding” (April 2009); and Gottlieb’s “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy” (July/August 2011), an indictment of so-called helicopter parenting. These stories have sparked lively and sometimes anguished responses in other magazines, newspapers, and popular blogs, as well as on Facebook, over lunches, and during book-group get-togethers. Four of them have sparked book deals (for Gottlieb, Rosin, Bolick, and Slaughter), and CBS has purchased a sitcom based on Bolick’s meditation on the single life.

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On Thursday night’s episode of the award-winning comedy, Jack Donaghy -- the debonair, Reaganite CEO played by Alec Baldwin -- confirmed what some of us have been thinking for a while: “We’re on the verge of a class war.”

Since the show’s first episode, Donaghy has embodied a parodic late-capitalist overlord. In previous episodes, however, the fulcrum of his political commentary fell strictly along party lines: he called Obama a communist from Kenya, described Bill Clinton as president “inter-Bush” and engaged in Reagan-themed role-play sex. The jokes last night broke this mold. His reference to class war was not just wheeling out the Republican canard that higher taxes constitute a war on successful people. Donaghy was talking about unrest on the streets of New York.

Baldwin’s character was mugged in a Manhattan construction tunnel and notes with shock that “my assailant was a middle-aged white man wearing a button-down shirt and Dockers.” His analysis: “The lower classes are getting cranky at the rich earning all their money away from them.” There’s no falling back on tacit racism or pointing blindly at gang violence; Jack -- like many of his real-life counterparts in the 1 percent – was forced to recognize a structural problem.

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The Baldwin brouhaha comes on the heels of a splashy New York Times story about the supposed harmlessness of electronic devices. The gist of public perception -- certainly the perception of Mr. Baldwin -- fueled and refueled by articles like this, is that the prohibition against personal electronic devices is a waste of time.

Well, it is and it isn't. It depends which gadgets you're talking about, and for what reasons.

Can a cellphone really interfere with a plane's systems and avionics? The answer is that it's highly unlikely, but possible. That's not the answer you want, I know, but like almost everything in commercial aviation, it depends. For example, although a plane's electronics are designed with interference in mind, if the shielding is old or faulty there's a greater potential for trouble.

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Many of you know me as Alec Baldwin, the Academy Award-nominated actor who has starred in such productions as "Glengarry Glen Ross," "The Hunt for Red October" and that brief stint I did on "Will and Grace" back in 2005. If you are anywhere between the ages of 18 and 35, you might best know me as Jack Donaghy from NBC's must-see TV show "30 Rock." If you are of that age but don't own a television, I was also the narrator in "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "Beetlejuice." You loved those movies, didn't you? Great.

If you are under the age of 18, I am not here to talk to you today. But that doesn't mean you are not important. Go tell your parents how much you liked my cameo in the "SpongeBob SquarePants" film, or as the voice of Makunga the Lion in "Madagascar 2."

So now that we all here have established that you know who I am, I would like to officially announce that I plan to run for mayor of New York City. (Wait for murmurs to die down.)

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