Alec Baldwin On 'Boardwalk Empire': Mark Wahlberg Says It Almost Happened

Steve Buscemi pulls off a mean Nucky Thompson, but he wasn't the only choice for HBO's "Boardwalk Empire."

"There we a couple of discussions, I think it came down to Terry [Winter] and Marty [Scorsese]," Mark Wahlberg, the show's executive producer, recently told Howard Stern. "There were other names talked about ... the only other person I had a conversation about with Marty was Alec Baldwin. I don't know if he was offered the part or not, but he was probably tied up in '30 Rock.'"

While fans would be devastated to see Baldwin leave his post at Rockefeller Center, he wouldn't likely pass up an opportunity to head to HBO.

"The truth of the matter is that NBC is in its predicament," Baldwin said of "30 Rock's" home earlier this year. "They’re in this tough place, and we’d like to see them get out of it."

Listen to Wahlberg's full interview with Stern here.

"Boardwalk Empire" returns for Season 3 in the fall of 2012 on HBO.