Alec Baldwin has spoken for the first time after the accident that killed the cinematographer of the film ‘Rust’. The performer has assured that he was not aware that he had shot Hutchins with a real bullet until minutes after the accident. “I thought to myself, ‘Did he pass out?’ The idea that there was a real bullet in that gun didn’t occur to me until probably 45 minutes or an hour had passed,” the actor said during an interview on ABC, his first after the tragic incident in October.
According to Baldwin, the confusion in the studio was evident and that no one “could understand” what happened in the seconds immediately after the shooting, to the point that he came to think that his partner had suffered a heart attack. “The very idea that someone had put a real bullet in was not even possible,” he said emotionally.
When asked if he feels guilty about what happened, the interpreter replied “no” and said: “There is someone responsible, I don’t know who it is, but I know it’s not me”. “I would have killed myself if I thought I was responsible,” ABC News reports.
Baldwin has insisted that he “never pulled the trigger” but that, following the cinematographer’s own instructions, he cocked the gun to put it in firing position during a rehearsal of camera positions for the film “Rust.” “She’s next to the camera. The camera is here. She’s giving me instructions on how she wants the picture angle of the scene and I pull the gun out,” he has described.
“I’m not pointing it at the camera lens. I’m holding the gun where she tells me to hold it. Which turned out to be under her armpit. (…) We continue and then I start cocking the gun. I’m not going to fire it. She says, ‘just retaliate.’ And then I drop the hammer on the gun and the gun goes off,” he has continued.
After the shot Baldwin stood for a minute next to her, who was still conscious and in ‘shock’ until finally she faded away.
More than a month after the event, Baldwin still doesn’t know where that bullet came from. “Somebody put live ammunition in that gun, a bullet that wasn’t even supposed to be in the building,” he has said. “I can’t say who it was but it wasn’t me.”
The actor, who was also a producer on the film, broke down in tears when talking about Hutchins: “It doesn’t seem real to me,” he said. “She was loved and admired by everyone who worked with her.
Record of the company that supplied the ammunition
The interview comes in the same week that investigators in the state of New Mexico have ordered a search of the company that supplied the ammunition and weapons for the filming of the movie. According to local press, police are trying to find out the exact origin of the ammunition delivered by PDQ Arm & Prop LLC, an Albuquerque-based company whose owner, Seth Kenny, told authorities he recalled seeing a shipment that “caught his eye” because it was labeled in an unusual way.
The business owner had previously worked with the father of Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the 24-year-old hired as a weapons handler on the Baldwin production and whose father has acknowledged using live ammunition for target practice on other shoots.
Two weeks ago, the film’s script supervisor, Mamie Mitchell, and lighting chief Serge Svetnoy filed lawsuits against Baldwin and other members of the production for endangering the safety of employees.
Statements from crew members who worked on the set of “Rust” describe a precarious work environment in which protests piled up and half a dozen employees resigned on the day of the accident.
Santa Fe sheriff Adan Mendoza said last month that he had found about 500 rounds of ammunition at the studio, including a mix of “blanks, dummy bullets and real bullets.
No Comment