Liberal actor Alec Baldwin believes the plaintiffs in multiple “Rust” shooting lawsuits, which he has been named a defendant in, are not “victims,” but opportunists going after “deep pockets litigants.”
Baldwin spoke about the shooting during a panel at the Boulder International Film Festival over the weekend.
“From the beginning, from the moment this happened, everybody has put out — besides all the anguish and the suffering, horrible feelings we have and, of course, there are two victims and nobody else is a victim, so to speak — we have dealt with a situation where specific people are not as interested in finding out what really happened,” he said.
The actor was the unintentional triggerman in an accidental gun death that took the life of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza on the independent movie’s set last fall.
“What you have is a certain group of litigants on whatever side, who their attitude is, well, the people who likely seem negligent have enough money,” Baldwin went on, perpetuating his narrative that he’s not at fault for the shooting.
“And the people who have money are not negligent, but we’re not gonna let that stop us from doing what we need to do in terms of litigation,” he stated. “Why sue people if you’re not going to get money? That’s what you’re doing.”
Hutchins’ husband Matthew criticized Baldwin for playing the victim, after he filed a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of himself and the couple’s young son.
“Hearing him blame Halyna in the interview and shift responsibility to others and seeing him cry about it, I just feel like, ‘Are we really supposed to feel bad about you, Mr. Baldwin?’” Hutchins said in February.
Baldwin once again shifted responsibility onto the film’s crew members, and went as far as faulting movie audiences for their viewing preferences.
“When someone whose job it is to ensure the safety of the weapon hands someone else whose job was to be the secondary layer of protection for safety and they hand it over to and you declare that that weapon is safe — that’s how I’ve lived my whole life,” he remarked.
“I’ve relied on the safety experts there to declare the gun is safe and hand me the gun. Never had a problem,” Baldwin continued. “The thing to remember is that guns are fired in films because that’s what audiences want.”
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