Alec Baldwin has accused the family of the late cinematographer Halyna Hutchins of trying to get money out of him.
The actor addressed the fatal accident on the Rust set when he appeared at the Boulder International Film Festival and insisted that he remained “hopeful when the facts come out we will not be held criminally responsible” for the shooting.
Hutchins, 42, was killed in October 2021 when a prop gun that Baldwin was rehearsing with fired a live round that struck her in the chest.
Director Joel Souza, 48, was also hit during the incident on the New Mexico set but survived.
“From the beginning, from the moment this happened, everybody has put out – besides all the anguish and the suffering, horrible feelings we have and, of course, there are two victims and nobody else is a victim, so to speak – we have dealt with a situation where specific people are not as interested in finding out what really happened,” said Mr Baldwin.
“What you have is a certain group of litigants on whatever side, who their attitude is, well, the people who likely seem negligent have enough money.
“And the people who have money are not negligent, but we’re not gonna let that stop us from doing what we need to do in terms of litigation.”
And he added: “Why sue people if you’re not going to get money? That’s what you’re doing.”
Mr Baldwin also repeated his claim that set armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, 24, was responsible for the fatal accident.
“When someone whose job it is to ensure the safety of the weapon hands someone else whose job was to be the secondary layer of protection for safety and they hand it over to and you declare that that weapon is safe – that’s how I’ve lived my whole life,” said Mr Baldwin.
“I’ve relied on the safety experts there to declare the gun is safe and hand me the gun. Never had a problem.”
And he added that actors are “not allowed” to declare a weapon safe on set.
“I mean, the joke is, you don’t want the actors doing the safety check. They can’t even make coffee, they’re so stupid,” he said.
