Alec Baldwin calls out ‘trash press’ and insists he did not pull trigger on Rust set
‘It doesn’t matter what you do. The ones that are out to get you are out to get you,’ actor said
Alec Baldwin has defended himself against the “trash press” that he feels is out to get him, insisting that he did not pull the trigger of the gun that killed a cinematographer on the Rust movie set.
The 64-year-old actor accidentally shot Halyna Hutchins on the New Mexico set of the Western in October 2021 with what he believed was an unloaded “cold gun” handed to him as he was about to film a scene.
The gun discharged one bullet which struck and killed Hutchins, 42, and also injured the film’s director, Joel Souza.
Since the fatal incident Baldwin, 64, has denied pulling the trigger of the gun and said that it had gone off on its own.
However, a recent FBI report concluded that Baldwin did pull the trigger.
In a new interview that seemingly took place prior to the FBI’s public report, Baldwin spoke with former CNN presenter Chris Cuomo on his YouTube channel, The Chris Cuomo Project, about the incident in a video published on Tuesday (16 August).
“Journalism has changed,” Baldwin told Cuomo. “I mean doing this with you is a miracle. I don’t want to talk to anybody anymore. Everything is surface area to be condemned and cancelled again.”
The actor further added: “I used to think that The Post was something that cops and firemen and doormen read for the sports page.
“It doesn’t matter what you do. The ones that are out to get you are out to get you. And in this case, not even so much that kind of trash press, I mean anything Murdoch and anything Post.”
He went on to say that “every single person on the set of the film knows what happened. And the people that are talking loudest about what happened or speculating about what happened were not on the set of the film – the LA Times, The Hollywood Reporter, they talk on and on and on about ‘what if this?’ and ‘what if that?’”.
Cuomo later pressed Baldwin about his December interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, in which the actor denied pulling the trigger.
“That will not make sense to people. If a bullet comes out of a gun, they say well then someone fired it, and it’s in your hands,” Cuomo argued.
Baldwin went on to explain “fanning a gun”, which is a shooting technique. “In old Western movies, you’d see someone fan the hammer of the gun. The hammer didn’t lock, you pulled it back to an extent where it would fire the bullet without you pulling the trigger, without you locking the hammer,” he clarified.
“The man who’s the principal safety officer on the set of the film declared that the gun was safe when he handed it to me. The man who was the principal safety officer of the film declared, in front of the entire assemblage, this is a cold gun,” he insisted.
“There’s only one question to ask here: Who put a live round in the gun?”
Despite the FBI’s report, no decision has yet been made by prosecutors on whether Baldwin, or anyone else, will face criminal charges.