Alec Baldwin said his shooting of Halyna Hutchins on the set of “Rest” “took years of my life” and cost him professional.
The ‘Boss Baby’ star told CNN he’s lost five projects in the wake of Hutchins’ death, and industry leaders don’t seem willing to risk hiring him.
“I was fired from another job yesterday,” Baldwin said. “There I was all set to go to a movie, jump on a plane… I’ve been talking to these guys for months and they told me yesterday that’s why we don’t want to make the movie with you.”
Baldwin, 65, also said he feared for his life after President Donald Trump publicly said he believed he shot the cameraman on purpose. Baldwin said the stress of those fears “took years off my life.”
“There’s just a stream of people attacking me who don’t know the facts,” he said.
Baldwin has credited his family for helping him through the tragedy, but also said he likely would have left Hollywood if he hadn’t had to support his wife, Hilaria Baldwin, who is pregnant with their seventh child together.
“If I didn’t have my wife I don’t know where I would be now… If I hadn’t had her I probably would have quit, retired, left, you know I sold everything I owned a house in the middle of nowhere and you just know you’ve found something else to do, sell real estate,” he told the outlet.
While New Mexico’s Office of Medical Investigator officially ruled the shooting an accident, Baldwin blamed wholly on Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who served as the gunsmith and props assistant on the film, and assistant director Dave Halls, who handed over a gun.
“Someone put a sharp bullet in the gun who should have known better,” Baldwin told CNN. “That was [Gutierrez-Reed’s] function. Her job was to look at the ammunition and enter the dummy round or the blank round, and there were no live rounds on set.
“There are two people who didn’t do what they were supposed to do,” he added. “I’m not sitting there saying that I want them, you know, to go to jail, or that I want their lives to be hell. I don’t want that, but I want everyone to know that these are the two people responsible for what happened.”
In a statement, Halls’ attorney said Baldwin is trying to shift blame.
“Baldwin points the finger at others because the evidence points to him,” said Lisa Torraco. Hallen is not responsible. Everyone has to stop. People only point the finger at Halls because they don’t want the responsibility of being wrong. Halls is a scapegoat. People need to look at the evidence.”
Gutierrez Reed, meanwhile, sued the film’s weapons and ammunition supplier and founder, Seth Kenney, alleging that he sold live and fake ammunition together, leading to Hutchins’ death on set.
Kenney’s attorneys responded in July, denying all the allegations and asking the court to drop the case, CNN reported. He admitted, however, that his company was the sole supplier of ammunition for the “Rust” set.
“We agree with Mr. Baldwin and believe that as the primary ammunition supplier, Seth Kenney was mixing live rounds with blanks in the ammunition supplied to Rust,” Gutierrez-Reed’s attorney, Jason Bowles, told CNN.
“We have again requested that the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI test the live rounds for fingerprints and DNA to confirm where the live rounds came from. To date, they have not done so with regard to this crucial question, which must be answered in order to get the full truth of what happened.”