Actor Alec Baldwin has spoken out on the fatal shooting that took place on the set of his film "Rust," underscoring that he has nothing to hide and does not feel guilty about the incident.
"I feel that someone is responsible for what happened, and I can't say who that is, but I know it's not me," the actor said in his first TV interview since the October shooting. "If I felt I was responsible, I might have killed myself."
The Thursday-aired interview saw Baldwin sift through the series of events that took place moments before Hutchins' death, explaining at one point that the cinematographer had directed him to point the gun in her direction.
“This is a marking rehearsal,” he said. “She’s next to the camera. The camera is here. She’s guiding me through how she wants me to hold the angle. I draw the gun out – the gun wasn’t meant to be fired in that angle.”
“I’m not shooting to camera lens. I’m holding the gun where she told me to hold it, which turned out to be below her armpit," he noted. "But we kept doing this…. I start to cock the gun. She said, just ‘cheat it down, could you see that, could you see that.’ I let go of the hammer of the gun, the gun goes off.”
The actor went on to relay to Stephanopoulos that he had no idea that Hutchins' had been shot, and that he had believed she was experiencing a heart attack or similar ailment when she collapsed to the ground.
“No one could understand – did she have a heart attack? The idea that there was a live bullet in the gun did not occur,” he reiterated.
Baldwin indicated that he wasn't aware that she had been injured for another 45 minutes, with him only finding out that the shot had been fatal once he was interviewed by law enforcement officials several hours later.
While Baldwin stressed that he didn't care if the October shooting ended his career, he did emphasize that he remained seriously concerned about how live ammunition wound up on the set. "Where did that bullet come from?" he posed.
“I don't know how that bullet arrived in that gun. I don't know,” Baldwin said. “But I'm all for doing anything that will take us to a place where this is less likely to happen again.”
To date, no charges have been filed as a result of the shooting, but Santa Fe County District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies has indicated that "all options are on the table at this point." Baldwin stated during the interview that insiders have told him it's "highly unlikely" he would face any charges over the killing.
Production for "Rust" has remained shuttered since the October shooting. The incident has since renewed focus on safety measures for production crew and actors, with some individuals, including wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne Johnson, vowing to stick to only props and CGI techniques to fill in for any weapons.