Alec Baldwin says he feels sadness over fatal film set shooting, but not guilt
CBC
Alec Baldwin said he feels incredible sadness and regret over the shooting that killed a cinematographer on a New Mexico film set, but not guilt.
"Someone is responsible for what happened, and I can't say who that is, but it's not me," Baldwin said in an ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos that aired Thursday night, the first time the actor has spoken in depth on screen about the Oct. 21 shooting on the set of the Western Rust.
"Honest to god, if I felt I was responsible, I might have killed myself."
Baldwin said it is essential for investigators to find out who put the bullet in the gun he fired, that was supposed to be empty, that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza.
"There's only one question to be resolved, and that's where did the live round come from?" Baldwin said.
Baldwin said in a clip from the interview released a day earlier that "I would never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger at them. Never."
He said it was Hutchins herself who asked him to point the gun just off camera and toward her armpit before it went off.
"I let go of the hammer and 'bang' the gun goes off," he said.
When Stephanopoulos told Baldwin that many say you should never point a gun directly at someone on a set, he responded, "unless the person is the cinematographer who was directing me where to point the gun for her camera angle."
Baldwin said it was 45 minutes to an hour before he began to understand that a live round had been in the gun, and didn't know it for sure until he was being interviewed hours later. He thought Hutchins might have been hurt by a blank at close range or had a heart attack.
"The idea that somebody put a live bullet in the gun was not even in reality."
He had one of several tearful moments when he described Hutchins, saying she was "somebody who was loved by everybody and admired by everybody who worked with her."
Baldwin said he was doing the interview to counter public misconceptions about the shooting and to make it clear that "I would go to any lengths to undo what happened."
But Baldwin said "I want to make sure that I don't come across like I'm the victim because we have two victims here."
