Alec Baldwin is NOT doing a good job handling the Rust shooting fallout.
While we wanted to extend the actor some sympathy — obviously, he never intended for Halyna Hutchins’s death and experiencing that kind of one-in-a-million accident is unimaginable — his actions in the months following the shooting have become harder and harder to defend. Most recently, he’s been in a back-and-forth with Halyna’s widower Matt Hutchins, which is such utterly poor taste we don’t even know where to begin.
Unfortunately, the embattled performer just can’t hold his tongue on this issue, and had to pile on. He spoke more about the shooting at the Boulder International Film Festival over the weekend, and seemingly accused Halyna’s family’s lawsuit against him of being a cash grab (you can see video of the event HERE).
According to CNN, he said:
“What you have is a certain group of people, litigants and whatever, on whatever side, who their attitude is, ‘Well the people who likely seem negligent have no money and the people who have money are not negligent.’”
Wow. In other words, since he’s the rich one, he’s getting targeted? Pretty shameless.
The 30 Rock alum didn’t specify which (of the many) lawsuits were specifically targeting “deep-pocket litigants,” but his comments seem in line with other recent jabs at Matt Hutchins. In a not-so-subtle subtweet, Alec wrote that “being truthful” in Buddhism means “using speech to benefit others, and not to use it to benefit only ourselves.” This came shortly after Matt’s Today interview in which he said:
”The idea that the person holding the gun causing it to discharge is not responsible is absurd to me. Every individual who touches a firearm has a responsibility for gun safety. But gun safety was not the only problem on that set. There were a number of industry standards that were not practiced. There’s multiple responsible parties.”
Objectively, this is not an unreasonable thing for Matt to say about the man who shot and killed his wife — a man who was not only the one holding the gun, but was also a producer of the film. Yet during the moderated event at the film festival, the 63-year-old continued to pass the buck. He stated:
“All my career, without incident, I’ve relied on the safety experts there to declare the gun safe and never had a problem, and this happened.”
He went on to claim actors are “not allowed” to declare weapons safe, adding:
“When someone, whose job is to ensure the safety of a weapon, hands someone else, whose job is to be the secondary layer of protection for safety of a weapon, and they hand you that weapon, you declare that that weapon is safe.”
The Emmy winner continued:
“That’s how I’ve done it my whole life because you’re not allowed as an actor to declare the weapon … 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.”
That’s true. But after all that, he then also said he didn’t even pull the trigger — brushing away not just any responsibility but any involvement. Like he’s denying anything happened. It seems to us from Matthew Hutchins’ statements since that that is what’s driving him the most, the idea his wife’s death would be swept under the rug so someone else could sleep better at night. It didn’t sound like money was the driving force at all.
At the very least, Alec thought to add that Halyna was a “lovely” and “talented” woman, but the damage is surely done. There’s just a complete lack of accountability on Alec’s part.
If he’s not ready to own up to any part in it, he at least doesn’t have to keep talking about it publicly, casting blame elsewhere, tangling with the grieving family of the victim for pity’s sake. Yet he seems incapable of keeping his head down and his mouth shut on the issue.
While Alec Baldwin may very well be found not responsible for the shooting in a court of law, none of us will forget the complete lack of grace with which he conducted himself in the aftermath.
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