Alec Baldwin Was Right To Remain Silent On Halyna Hutchins’ Doc

Although the doc contains behind-the-scenes footage from the set of the Western film and interviews with the cast and crew, the “30 Rock” actor loomed large over the documentary, despite not making a direct appearance.

On October 21, 2021, Alec Baldwin was rehearsing a scene for a Western film inside a church in New Mexico. He pulled out his gun, and, although he claims that he did not pull the trigger, the gun fired. This gun, which somehow contained a real bullet instead of a dummy round, shot right through Halyna Hutchins and became embedded in the shoulder of director Joel Souza.

The late cinematographer passed away en route to a hospital in Albuquerque. Souza was hospitalized and would go on to make a full recovery. He would even finish filming “Rust” in Montana the following year. And although the documentary does include footage of this set, along with an interview with new cinematographer Bianca Cline, Baldwin does not discuss the matter any more than he already has.

It’s pretty clear why Baldwin chose not to participate in the documentary. It was pretty clear that anything he said can and will be held against him. Going on record to admit fault in Hutchins’s death would not have helped him when he was facing involuntary manslaughter charges.

The State of New Mexico filed charges against him and armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed in January 2023, over a year after Hutchins’s death. The charges against Baldwin were dropped in April 2023 while the FBI conducted testing on the gun used in the fatal shooting. Charges were refiled in January 2024, only a few months before a jury found Hannah Gutierrez-Reed guilty of involuntary manslaughter. In April 2024, a judge sentenced her to the state maximum of 18 months behind bars.

Baldwin was facing the same sentence if convicted, but lucky for him, the trial never made it that far. In the second day of witness testimony, a crime scene tech testified that there was evidence – bullets, specifically – that was never turned over to the defense. The judge ruled that the only appropriate remedy of this Brady violation was to dismiss the charges with prejudice, meaning that Baldwin can never again face criminal charges for his role in Hutchins’s death.

However, that doesn’t mean that he is out of the woods yet. He is still named in several civil lawsuits due to his producer credit, including one brought by Hutchins’s mother, father, and sister. Although he may not be facing time behind bars, the burden of proof in a civil matter is a lot lower, and any good lawyer would advise his client not to say anything incriminating.

Although the “Beetlejuice” actor may not have a lot to say about Halyna Hutchins, he does have a lot to say about himself in the aftermath of the shooting. His wife, Hilaria Baldwin, in particular, seems eager to paint Baldwin as a victim of circumstance on their TLC reality show “The Baldwins.”

“I hoped it might have a little more Halyna in it or been a little more about Halyna,” Souza said before addressing the director. “I know that was your original intention when you talked to me about it. And I could tell when we would talk over the years in the intervening time that you were under some pressure.”

Mason, who met Hutchins when their sons went to preschool together, admitted that there had been a “shift” in the direction of the movie. “A film has these evolutions; it starts with the thing you imagine you can do, and then you start working on it, and you can’t really do that thing anymore,” she explained. “You shift.”

However, at the Q&A, she seemed desperate to put the focus back on her friend. When asked by an audience member how difficult it would be to make the film, she replied, “Maybe if anyone out here knew Halyna and would have anything to say. It would just be awesome to hear a story about Halyna.”

Although there wasn’t a lot of focus on Halyna Hutchins’s life in the documentary, it’s a good thing that Baldwin wasn’t present, as his star power would have overshadowed her already fading legacy completely.