Actor Alec Baldwin gave his first media interview since the fatal incident on the Santa Fe set of his movie “Rust,” which killed Halnya Hutchins.
Hutchins, the movie’s director of photography, was reportedly behind a camera facing Baldwin as he was prepping for a scene involving a prop gun that Baldwin believed did not contain any live rounds. At some point, the gun discharged, killing 42-year-old Hutchins and the injuring the film’s director Joel Souza.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Baldwin said in a preview clip released ahead of the ABC News interview that he did not aim the gun at Hutchins and did not pull the trigger. The actor maintained in the full interview, which aired Thursday night, that he has no idea how the weapon discharged or why it contained live rounds.
Baldwin, who was the lead actor and a producer on the film, told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that the scene called for him to raise the prop weapon and “start to cock the pistol — cut.”
“I’m just showing her, I go, ‘How about that? Does that work? Do you see that?’ … She said, ‘yeah, that’s good.’” Baldwin told Stephanopoulos. “I let go of the hammer — bang, the gun goes off.”
Despite that, Baldwin said he did not initially realize that Hutchins had been shot, and believed she may have fainted. The actor said he didn’t know what had happened until he was later interviewed by police, and officers presented him with the bullet recovered from the injured director.
“And then the kind of insanity-inducing agony of thinking that someone put a live bullet in the gun,” he said.
Despite an affidavit claiming that Baldwin did in fact pull the trigger, both he and the film’s assistant director Dave Halls — who told Baldwin the gun was “cold” — insist that actor did not pull the trigger.
“Since day one, he thought it was a misfire,” Halls’ attorney said in an appearance on “Good Morning America,” according to NBC News.
“And until Alec said that, it was really hard to believe but Dave has told me since the very first day I met him that Alec did not pull that trigger.”
According to an NBC News report, Baldwin told Stephanopoulos he did not feel any guilt over the fatal shooting.
“I feel that someone is responsible for what happened, and I can’t say who that is,” Baldwin said. “But I know it’s not me.”
“Where did that bullet come from?” he continued. “Somebody brought live rounds — plural — onto the set of the film. And one of them ended up in that gun.”
Authorities have not filed any criminal charges in connection to Hutchins’ death.
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