ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos will have the first sit-down interview with Alec Baldwin since the accidental shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the latter’s film Rust.
The full interview will air as a primetime special on ABC tomorrow, Thursday, Dec. 2, at 8 p.m., and will stream on Hulu later that evening, the network said Wednesday. ABC will also air a two-hour edition of its newsmagazine 20/20 on Dec. 10 examining the Rust accident. That program will feature additional reporting and interviews.
The interview and specials were announced on Good Morning America on Wednesday morning. “This was the most intense [ABC interview] I have ever experienced,” Stephanopoulos said on the program Wednesday. “He was so raw, as you can imagine he was devastated, but he was also very candid, he was very forthcoming, he answered every question, he talked about Halyna Hutchins, meeting her family as well, and he talked in detail about what happened on the set that day.”
In a teaser clip released on Wednesday (below), Baldwin is shown in tears as he remembers Hutchins as someone who was loved and admired by her peers. “It just doesn’t seem real to me,” he tells Stephanopoulos. The actor says the tragedy is the worst thing that has ever happened to him, “because I think back and I think of, what could I have done?”
In the short teaser, Baldwin also tells Stephanopoulos, “I didn’t pull the trigger. … I would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them, never” and that he has “no idea” how a live bullet ended up on the Rust set: “Someone put a live bullet in a gun. A bullet that wasn’t even supposed to be on the property.”
On Oct. 21, Rust cinematographer Hutchins was fatally shot and director Souza was wounded when Baldwin, a producer and star on the Western that was filming in Bonanza City, New Mexico, fired a gun that he believed was safe but actually contained a live round, per the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office.
The criminal investigation into the shooting is being conducted by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office and the New Mexico First Judicial District Attorney and could take months to complete, authorities have said. The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office about Baldwin’s new comments.
EXCLUSIVE: Alec Baldwin. The first interview since the fatal accident on the set of the movie ‘Rust’.
The emotional @ABC News Special with @GStephanopoulos breaks tomorrow night at 8/7c on ABC – streaming later that evening on @Hulu. pic.twitter.com/q7QD1vesUX
— 20/20 (@ABC2020) December 1, 2021
In addition to the primetime interview with Baldwin, a follow-up Rust special will air next week, Friday, and will stream the following day on Hulu. “Next week, a two-hour 20/20 delves into the events ahead of the deadly shooting on the set of Rust and the pending investigations into what went wrong; and features the Baldwin interview and new interviews,” ABC News said.
Baldwin, armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed and assistant director David Halls are among those under investigation; multiple lawsuits have been filed as a result.
On Tuesday, a search warrant affidavit filed for a prop shop shed light on how alleged live ammunition may have ended up on the set. The affidavit notes that Thell Reed, a longtime Hollywood armorer and the father of Gutierrez Reed, had a can containing between 200 and 300 rounds of “live ammunition” from a previous project that was kept by Seth Kenney of PDQ Arm & Prop, LLC. Thell Reed suggested that ammo may match ammo collected from the Bonanza Creek Ranch set.
“She was my friend,” Baldwin had said about Hutchins in his first, brief comments after her death on Oct. 30. “The day I arrived in Santa Fe and started shooting, I took her to dinner with Joel [Souza], the director.” He added at the time: “We were a very, very well-oiled crew shooting a film together, and then this horrible event happened.”
Jackie Strause and Ryan Parker contributed to this report.
Dec. 1, 11 a.m. Updated to include teaser clip; THR reaching out to Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office about Baldwin’s comments.