Alec Baldwin spoke for the first times about the shooting. This was definitely an uncommon interview.
He was being chased by journalists in his car in Vermont yesterday. He pulled over on by the side of the road and agreed to speak with them — if they would thereafter give him some space.
Baldwin got out of his car with his wife Hilaria, and then insisted that he couldn’t make a statement because it was an “active investigation,” and the sheriff’s office had told him he wasn’t allowed to speak about it.
He began talking about the case for several more minutes.
Baldwin claimed that they had a “very, very well oiled crew shooting a film together, and then this horrible event happened.” He termed the shooting a “one in a trillion event.” He said that the film would not continue.
One point in the interview was intense. He even stopped talking to his wife, when she wanted to share her thoughts.
“But remember, how many bullets have been fired in films and TV shows in the last 75 years. This is America,” Baldwin said. “How many bullets have gone off in movies and on TV sets before? In the 75-year history of television, how many billions have there been?
Most of this without incident.
So what has to happen now is, we have to realize that when it does go wrong and it’s this horrible, catastrophic thing, some new measures have to take place. Rubber guns, plastic guns, no live — no real armaments on set.
That’s not for me to decide. It’s urgent that you understand I’m not an expert in this field, so whatever other people decide is the best way to go in terms of protecting people’s safety on film sets, I’m all in favor of and I will cooperate with that in any way that I can.”
But the facts and the reports don’t suggest a “very well oiled crew” or even a “one in a trillion event.”
Indeed, reportedly, they had another incident of accidental discharges of a gun a few days before involving Baldwin’s stunt double. Rather than “well-oiled,” the reports suggest a set plagued with safety issues as well as reports of target shooting with the prop guns for fun on breaks, including on the morning of the shooting.
One crew member even left the set just hours before filming began due to safety concerns. The police are already saying that there were suspected live rounds on the set that shouldn’t have been there.That appeared to contradict the statement from the armorer that they wouldn’t have live rounds on the set.
Shockingly, the assistant director, Dave Halls, also admitted he hadn’t checked all the rounds in the gun. Rust movie productions denied that any employees complained to them.
The police have now explained there was also a fourth person in the chain of custody of the gun in question — prop master Sarah Zachry. During an appearance on Fox on Thursday, Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza also made some other significant comments, “I’d be careful using the word ‘accident,’” Mendoza said. “This is obviously a tragedy and it was avoidable, so right now it’s a criminal investigation.”
I have some thoughts, and the first one is that while it’s possible that the sheriff told him not to talk about the case, I think it unlikely. It’s likely that his attorney told him not to talk about the case. While prosecutors and police often make the comment that they can’t talk about active investigations, the people involved generally are free to talk about the facts — unless there’s some sort of secret investigation. That doesn’t seem to be in play here.
However, if his attorney had told him to not talk (as any great attorney should), then is he still talking? He may think he’s staying nothing important about the case, but he’s not the judge.
Obviously, he’s now committed himself to these “well-oiled crew” and “one in a trillion” comments, for example. Depending on how the facts shake out and because he’s one of the producers here, he could face potential civil and criminal issues. It was not a smart decision. Although I can understand why he wants the media to protect his family members, it is still not smart.
Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University professor of law, agrees.
You may find it strange to insist on public statements from your lawyer, even though he has already told you to. https://t.co/zTCEPfXzfy
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) October 31, 2021
But given how things have unrolled in this whole case, it’s been a mess from the word go. So, maybe it follows that Baldwin wouldn’t be following the advice he was given.
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