More than three years after Alec Baldwin was involved in an accidental shooting on the set of the Western film Rust that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza, the actor participated in a reality show chronicling his life in the aftermath of the tragedy.
For Souza, at least, the TLC show was not must-watch TV. In a new interview with The Guardian, the filmmaker offered a scathing reply when asked if he’d seen The Baldwins.
“I think I was busy hitting myself in the face with a frying pan that night,” Souza said.
Souza has spoken previously about his distance from Baldwin in the wake of the deadly incident. “Getting through it was tough. We got through it,” he told Vanity Fair last year. “I got the performance I wanted. We’re not friends. We’re not enemies. There’s no relationship.”
Entertainment Weekly has reached out to representatives for Baldwin for comment.
Hutchins died after a prop gun being wielded by Baldwin discharged a live round on Oct. 21, 2021. The actor was initially charged with involuntary manslaughter before the charges were dropped, then was charged again in January 2024. Baldwin denied pulling the trigger, and the case against him was ultimately dismissed in July after the prosecutors committed a Brady violation. Baldwin filed a civil lawsuit against the prosecutors earlier this year.
Baldwin’s reality show premiered in February, and confronted the Rust tragedy at length in its first episode.
“Everyone who is close to Alec has seen his mental health decline,” the actor’s wife, Hilaria, said on the show. “He was diagnosed with PTSD and he says, in his darkest moments, ‘If an accident had to have happened on this day, why am I still here? Why couldn’t it be me?'”
John Lamparski/Getty Images
Alec Baldwin at a gala in New York in 2023
The 30 Rock actor told his wife, “My good friend said to me the other day, he said, ‘How are you doing?’ and I said, ‘I’m happier when I’m asleep than when I’m awake.'” Baldwin later said, “I don’t know where I’d be if I didn’t have you and these kids going through this.”
Hilaria referred to Hutchins’ death as an “unthinkable tragedy” that would forever “be part of our family’s story.” She added in the episode, “A son lost their mom. We are going to feel and carry this pain forever.”
She told her husband at one point, “You wake up in the morning and you’re like, ‘Oh God, why did I have to wake up?’ You’re so dark and it’s so painful.”
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In a later episode of The Baldwins, Hilaria suggested that her husband was suicidal after the shooting. “It was a very traumatic thing for everybody that was in that room, and everybody that is connected to it,” she said. “I found these text messages the other day between us, the day after. He said he wanted to kill himself.”
Saying Baldwin had “survivor’s guilt,” Hilaria added, “You’re involved in this thing that not anyone could even possibly imagine, so it goes back to that day. He wishes it were him.”
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