Entertainment
Alec Baldwin calls out George Clooney over gun safety comments after Halyna Hutchins shooting
An emotional Alec Baldwin has spoken out after the fatal shooting of Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust (Credits: ABC / BACKGRID)
Alec Baldwin has criticised George Clooney and others who made remarks about gun safety after the fatal shooting of Halyna Hutchins on the Rust film set.
The actor, 63, appeared in a sit-down interview where he addressed his accidental shooting of cinematographer Hutchins, breaking down in tears multiple times throughout.
Baldwin was holding a prop gun and aiming it at Hutchins, 42, for marking rehearsal when it went off, hitting and fatally injuring her.
Both Baldwin and Hutchins thought the gun was empty, and he is adamant that he did not pull the trigger.
Following Hutchins’ killing, many celebrities took to social media to criticise what they perceived as a lack of gun safety: George Clooney called it ‘insane and infuriating’ that there were so many failures on the set.
In his ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos, Baldwin said comments like Clooney’s ‘didn’t help’.
George Clooney harshly criticised the lack of gun safety on the set which led to Hutchins’ death(Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage)
Stephanopoulos asked: ‘How do you respond to actors like George Clooney who say every time they were handed a gun they checked it themselves?’
A frustrated Baldwin responded: ‘There were a lot of people who felt it necessary to contribute some comment to the situation, which really didn’t help the situation at all.
‘You have your protocols, you’re checking the gun every time… Good for you.
‘I’ve probably handled weapons as much as any other actor in films with an average career, again shooting or being shot by someone.’
He added: ‘In that time I had a protocol, and it never let me down.’
The actor broke down in tears multiple times throughout the interview (Picture: ABC / Backgrid)
Clooney had told the WTF Podcast: ‘Every single time they hand me a gun, I look at it, open it, I show it to the person I’m pointing it to, I show it to the crew, every single take, you hand it back to the armorour when you’re done, you do it again…’
Baldwin was holding a gun given to him by an assistant director when it went off, killing mother-of-one Hutchins and injuring the film’s director, Joel Souza.
The actor said in the same interview that he feels ‘no guilt’ over the shooting because he is not responsible.
‘Someone is responsible for what happened and I can’t say who that is, but I know it’s not me’, he told Stephanopoulos, adding that he ‘might have killed myself’ if he thought it was his fault.
Hutchins was fatally injured after being shot by Alec (Picture: Getty)
Despite feeling no guilt, the actor admitted he wakes up from vivid nightmares about the shooting and hasn’t slept properly in weeks.
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Baldwin has been cooperating with detectives amid a police investigation into the incident, and has kept a low profile following the tragedy.
He spoke out in the days after Hutchins’ death, expressing his sadness at the incident in a statement on social media.
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