Nearly ten months after the fatal shooting on the set of Rust, Alec Baldwin is opening up about how the tragedy, and its fallout, has impacted his life.
The incident occurred on Oct. 21, when Baldwin, 64, was holding the gun that discharged and killed 42-year-old cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza. Baldwin has maintained that he did not pull the trigger of the revolver. Alec Baldwin. Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty
In an interview with CNN published Friday, Baldwin said since the incident he has lost five jobs and has feared for his own safety after former President Donald Trump said publicly that he believed Baldwin killed Hutchins on purpose.
“I got fired from another job yesterday,” Baldwin told CNN. “There I was all set to go to a movie, jump on a plane … I’ve been talking with these guys for months and they told me yesterday we don’t want to do the film with you because of this.”
He added that the stress he has experienced has “taken years off my life” and credits his wife, Hilaria, as the reason he hasn’t walked away from the industry altogether. Halyna Hutchins. Mat Hayward/Getty
“If I didn’t have my wife, I don’t know where I would be right now … If I didn’t have her, I probably would have quit, retired, gone off, you know sold everything I owned, got a house in the middle of nowhere and just you know did find something else to do, sell real estate,” he said.
While Speaking on The Chris Cuomo Project for an interview that aired Tuesday, Baldwin insisted that Hutchins’ death is the “real tragedy,” not his own reputation.
“I’m not the victim here. Things, for me, are gonna get better. Things, for me, are gonna get cleared up. I’m a thousand percent confident about that,” he added.
He went on to say that “nothing’s going to bring this woman back. She died,” and noted Hutchins had “a little boy,” son Andros.
“Everything we’ve said doesn’t matter — me, my positioning, the press,” Baldwin continued. “The real tragedy here is what happened to this woman.” Alec Baldwin. Mark Sagliocco/Getty Images
Back in December, Baldwin said in an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that he “didn’t pull the trigger” on the gun during the on-set tragedy: “The trigger wasn’t pulled. I didn’t pull the trigger. I would never point a gun at someone and pull the trigger on them, never.”
There have not been any criminal charges yet.
According to an FBI forensic report obtained by ABC News last week, the revolver at the center of this case — when “intact and functional” — “could not be made to fire without a pull of the trigger” unless the hammer was “de-cocked on a loaded chamber” and “the hammer was struck directly.”
Luke Nikas, an attorney for Baldwin, said in a statement to ABC News that the FBI report is “being misconstrued.” He added, “The gun fired in testing only one time — without having to pull the trigger — when the hammer was pulled back and the gun broke in two different places. The FBI was unable to fire the gun in any prior test, even when pulling the trigger, because it was in such poor condition.”
“The critical report is the one from the medical examiner, who concluded that this was a tragic accident,” added Nikas. “This is the third time the New Mexico authorities have found that Alec Baldwin had no authority or knowledge of the allegedly unsafe conditions on the set, that he was told by the person in charge of safety on the set that the gun was ‘cold,’ and believed the gun was safe.”
ABC News also obtained the postmortem report from the medical examiners, which noted that “review of available law enforcement reports showed no compelling demonstration that the firearm was intentionally loaded with live ammunition on set.” The document reportedly added, “Based on all available information, including the absence of obvious intent to cause harm or death, the manner of death is best classified as accident.”
The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s detectives received the FBI’s completed forensic reports on Aug. 2, authorities confirmed in a press release last week. Additionally, detectives are still in the process of “obtaining, processing, and disclosing Alec Baldwin’s phone records.”
Once detectives finish reviewing the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator reports and the phone records, the final sheriff’s office investigation case file will be forwarded to the District Attorney for review and final charging decisions, the press release added.
This was clearly a mishandling of the firearm by the armorer and assistant director, so why do the sheriff’s detectives need to go through Mr. Baldwin’s cell phone records? The FBI’s forensics report stated that the incident was an accident. If it turns out otherwise, the fault would have to lie with whomever loaded the gun, and all evidence points out that it could not have been Mr. Baldwin that did so, since all the witnesses claim that he did not check the weapon, which would have required opening and examining the cylinder, which is a necessary action when loading.
LOL so you’re that POS last fan. This piece of trash is one of the worst humans on earth and deserves everything he is getting.
The kind of person Alec Baldwin is has nothing to do with whether he did anything wrong in this particular incident, or whether it’s right to fire someone based on optics.
I can only Imagine how this would be handled if he was a Republican or a NRA member.
I’m sure it would be MUCH harsher, but that doesn’t mean Alec should be treated just as wrongly as a republican would be. He should be treated the way any actor who did the same thing should be treated. Either he shot her on purpose or he shot her by accident. If he shot her by accident was he negligent. If he was negligent, to what degree?
Right, weird how the woman killed was going to make a documentary on child porn/abuse in Hollywood as her next project. Nothing to see hear, move along…
That is weird, and should be looked into, but correlation is NOT causation.