MSNBC has suspended Alec Baldwin's show "Up Late" after the actor apologized for his use of a gay slur earlier in the week.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (NOVEMBER 12, 2013) (NBC) - Actor Alec Baldwin said his late night talk show on cable news networkMSNBC will be taken off the air on Friday (November 15) and next week and apologized for comments that a gay rights group called homophobic epithets.

"I did not intend to hurt or offend anyone with my choice of words, but clearly I have - and for that I am deeply sorry," Baldwin said in the statement, adding that he was trying to protect his wife and daughter in New York.

In a video posted on celebrity website TMZ.com on Thursday (November 14), Baldwin confronts a photographer filming him in a New York street and calls him a homophobic slur that drew the ire of gay rights group GLAAD, which has previously defended the actor in accusations of homophobic language.

It was not known if the photographer at which Baldwin directed his comments was gay.

Baldwin, who has had many confrontations with photographers and reporters approaching him in public, also came under fire in June for homophobic tweets aimed at a reporter for Britain's Daily Mail newspaper.

Pulling Baldwin's show off of MSNBC's schedule caps a week for the actor in which he tearfully testified at the trial of a woman, Genevieve Sabourin, who was convicted of stalking and harassing him.