Hollywood legend Alec Baldwin says he “didn’t pull the trigger” of the gun that fatally wounded cinematographer Halyana Hutchins on the set of ‘Rust’.
The star made this claim in his first sit-down interview since the incident in October, reports BBC.com.
“I never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger at them. Never,” he told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos.
The interview was recorded on Tuesday, and is scheduled to air in the US on Thursday evening.
Mr Stephanopoulos described their 80-minute discussion as “raw” and “intense”.
The journalist, previewing the interview on Good Morning America on Wednesday, described Baldwin, 63, as “devastated” but “very clear” and “upcoming”.
“I’ve done thousands of interviews at ABC over the past 20 years. It was the most intense experience I’ve ever had.”
Baldwin is best known for his performances in films such as “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “The Hunt for Red October”, as well as his impersonation of Donald Trump in the US sketch show “Saturday Night Live”.
The interview marks the first time Baldwin has spoken about the incident on camera, except for a brief interview given to TMZ in October to stop the paparazzi from following him and his family.
In that appearance, he described the event as “one in a trillion episodes” and said that accidents of this nature rarely occur on film sets.
Hutchins was shot and killed as Baldwin rehearsed with a “cold” – or safe – gun on the Rust set in New Mexico.
Hutchins was taken to hospital by helicopter after the shooting, but he later died of his injuries. Director Joel Souza was also injured.
According to court records, Baldwin was handed the weapon by the film’s assistant director, Dave Hall, who did not know it contained ammunition and indicated that it had been taken down by shouting “cold gun”.
Halls was given the gun by Hannah Gutierrez-Reid, the 24-year-old armorer from the film.
Asked by Stephanopoulos how a live bullet hit the set, Baldwin replied, “I don’t know. Somebody put a live bullet in the gun. A bullet that shouldn’t even have been on the property.”
Gutierrez-Reid’s lawyers have said they do not know “where the live rounds came from”. This question is now at the center of police investigations in America.
Earlier this week, investigators received a warrant to search the premises of an arms supplier in the US. An affidavit accompanying the warrant stated that the police were told that the ammunition for the film came from multiple sources, including PDQ Arm & Prop.
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