Alec Baldwin has suggested that America wanted him “to die” after his involvement in the on-set death of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in 2021.
The 30 Rock star, 66, appeared on the December 17 episode of David Duchovny’s podcast Fail Better, where he claimed “there is more to come” after his involuntary manslaughter case was dismissed in July.
“There’s more to come, but the more to come is now my effort, and it’s going to be undeniably a successful effort, to raise and to expose what really happened,” Baldwin told the X-Files actor. “I was counterpunching. I was on the defensive. I was being accused. I was being indicted.”
The Saturday Night Live alum claimed that mainstream media organizations had “suppressed every story” that could help exonerate him and “amplified every story that could hurt me” ever since a prop gun Baldwin was holding went off during a rehearsal on the Rust set.
“The truth of what happened has never been told,” he said.
Baldwin went on to suggest that he was shunned by both the entertainment industry and the American public since Hutchins’s sudden death.
“In this country when people hate you on that level, they want three things. They want you to die,” he said. “The second thing is they want you to go to prison. These political crowds, both sides, love to see their enemies put in prison for years because prison is like a living hell.
“The third thing is they want you canceled, which is like being in prison or being dead because you roam the earth and you’re invisible,” Baldwin said.
When asked by Duchovny how he hopes to move forward since his involuntary manslaughter case was thrown out, the Beetlejuice star revealed “by the communications I’ve had lately that things are coming back my way to work.”
He also claimed that “much of this case that is not known” because there wasn’t a full trial regarding Hutchins’s death.
“The judge canceled the case,” Baldwin said. “She ruled that it was dismissed with prejudice, which I’m very grateful for because it was a very informed decision on her part. But if I’d gone all the way and gotten a verdict, that’s a little bit better because a bunch of people in a jury had considered the facts and we would’ve presented so much more. All that doesn’t get presented because the case is over.”
The fatal incident occurred in October 2021, when Baldwin — the lead actor and a co-producer of Rust — pointed a prop gun in Hutchins’s direction during a rehearsal. The gun went off, discharging a real bullet that killed her and wounded director Joel Souza.
Baldwin was facing up to 18 months in prison if he was convicted for the involuntary manslaughter charges, though he maintained his innocence leading up to the trial.
On July 12, the actor broke down in tears after Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer dismissed the case with prejudice based on the misconduct of police and prosecutors over the withholding of evidence from the defense. It was found that the state had withheld evidence that could have shed light on how live rounds got onto the set of the Rust movie.
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film’s armorer, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 18 months in prison. She was blamed by prosecutors for unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set and for failing to follow basic gun safety protocols.
