Alec Baldwin isn’t in a laughing mood, it seems. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to be the butt of jokes himself.
Sources tell Page Six that after a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week — in which he dealt with the aftermath of his arrest and saw his ABC talk show ignominiously bumped from its time slot — Baldwin has dropped out of an appearance at pal Billy Crystal’s Friars Club award ceremony.
The club for top comics had announced that Baldwin would speak at the Monday event alongside Robert De Niro, Katie Couric, Jimmy Fallon and Meg Ryan, among others.
But we’re told that Baldwin’s team told the legendary entertainment-industry institution that he won’t be joining them to present Crystal with its Icon Award at the Ziegfeld Ballroom after all.
Baldwin has been on the social scene as recently as Oct. 10, when he emceed a gala for classical-music star Lang Lang.
Last Friday, Nov. 2, the NYPD arrested Baldwin, claiming that he slugged a driver in the face when the motorist pulled in to park at a spot that was being held for Baldwin.
Cops said that a shouting match escalated to shoving, and finally the famously fiery thespian belted the victim.
But Baldwin said on his foundation’s Twitter feed later in the day that “the assertion that I punched anyone over a parking spot is false. I wanted to go on the record stating as much.”
Then on Tuesday, ABC announced that it was shoving Baldwin’s poorly rated new talk show, “The Alec Baldwin Show,” out of its Sunday night time slot into a less enviable Saturday berth.
It’s a big night for longtime Friar Crystal, who will become just the eighth recipient of the Icon Award after Douglas Fairbanks, Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Martin Scorsese, De Niro, Tom Cruise and Tony Bennett.
A rep for Baldwin didn’t get back to us, and a rep for the Friars Club declined to comment.
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