“By God, if I felt I was responsible, I could have been killed,” replied actor Alec Baldwin in his first interview after the tragedy on the set of the film he starred in and produced, Rust.
The winner of three Emmy Awards was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on an ABC special. “I feel like someone is responsible for what happened, and I can’t say who it is, but I know it’s not me.”
Although until now it was known that he had aimed and fired the prop gun without knowing that it was loaded with a real bullet, the actor denied that he had pulled the trigger. “The trigger was not pulled. I didn’t pull the trigger, I never pulled the trigger. No no no no no. I would never point a gun at someone and pull the trigger, ”he insisted.
Baldwin recounted the events that ended the life of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and said he followed instructions. “I hold the weapon where she indicates (…). I tell her I’m going to drop the hammer from the gun and ask her if she wants to see it, and she (Hutchins) says yes. I let go of the hammer. Bang. The gun goes off. Everybody is horrified. They are in shock. Is noisy. They are not wearing headphones. The gun should be empty. They told me they were handing me an empty gun ”.
Stephanopoulos described their 80-minute dialogue as “raw” and “intense” and the actor as “devastated”, “very sincere” and “talkative”. “I have done thousands of interviews in the last 20 years on ABC. This was the most intense I have ever experienced ”.
Open investigation
The investigation points to the responsibility of the assistant director David Halls and the young gunsmith Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who, according to US media, had little experience. DW adds that the film being shot at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, a famous set in New Mexico, was a low-budget western.
Now, the production for which Baldwin is credited as a producer is the subject of two civil lawsuits, one from Gutierrez-Reed. The 24-year-old has said “she had no idea how the live bullets got on set, and her lawyer suggested it could be sabotage,” says DW.
In the interview, Baldwin dismissed that theory. “I don’t know how anyone could have done that (…). It is overwhelmingly likely that it was an accident. “
The death of Hutchins also raised the opinion of Hollywood personalities, who condemned the negligence and the use of weapons. In fact, the Oscar nominee Rachel Morrison regretted the death of her colleague and rebuked the production for not allocating a budget for security. “There is no longer any reason to use real bullets when it costs like 50 cents to add shots in post-production and even less to use them during a scene where there is little or no interactive lighting,” he said on Instagram. “If you don’t have enough funding to make a tape safely, you shouldn’t make it. No shots, no scenes and no movies deserve the loss of life. “
But for Baldwin this was not the time to weigh in on the protocols for shooting with guns. “There were a lot of people who felt it necessary to contribute comments that were not helpful.” However, he has said that he will not make any more movies with weapons and that he has spoken with Matthew Hutchins, Halyna’s widower. He stated that he would not be surprised if he filed a lawsuit against the production.
The interview with ABC News is the first in which Baldwin has spoken about the incident in a news outlet, except for a brief conversation with TMZ in October, when the paparazzi were following him and his family. In that public appearance, Baldwin described the incident as “one in a billion episodes.” But the scriptmaster’s attorney later said that “a camera operator had reported two more gun shots during a rehearsal and said it was ‘very dangerous’ for important security protocols to be ignored.” ❖
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