Alec Baldwin made a rare public appearance at the Boulder International Film Festival where he spent some time speaking about what happened on the set of Rust back in October. At the time, Baldwin, a producer and star of the film, had been preparing for a scene in which his character would draw his weapon from his holster. At one point, the gun fired off a live round which killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza.

There has been a lot of finger-pointing involved in this story in the months since it happened, from those involved and affected by the tragedy to people sharing their opinions on social media. Baldwin spoke publicly in depth about what happened in a televised interview with George Stephanopoulos and expressed his belief that he wasn't directly responsible for what happened. Speaking more about the tragedy at BIFF, Baldwin reiterated this point of view, pointing out how, as an actor, he had faith in the assistant director and set armorer to ensure the prop gun was safe.

“Think of all the billions of rounds of ammunition that were fired on movie and TV sets in the last 75 years and four people have died... Compare that record to the opioid industry, the airline industry, the automobile industry, the gun industry itself... 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. I’ve relied on the safety experts there to declare the gun is safe and hand me the gun. Never had a problem.”

Baldwin and many others involved in the making of Rust have been hit with multiple lawsuits in regard to the fatal accident. Speaking further about the situation, Baldwin suggested that at least some of these lawsuits are coming from an attempt to get rich quick.

“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. 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. 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. Why sue people if you’re not going to get money? That’s what you’re doing.”

The actor added that he's eager for all of the facts to come out, confident that they will exonerate him.

“I’m very hopeful when the facts come out. We will not be held criminally responsible but it has changed my life, and I don’t mean this in the ordinary sense that I was involved in something or somebody passed. I mean, I was involved in a situation with somebody was killed. It’s changed my life just in terms of the function of weapons in films and television.”

Related: Alec Baldwin Makes Resolution to Overcome Negativity in 2022

Alec Baldwin Endorses New Gun Safety Regulations

Alec Baldwin
ABC

While Alec Baldwin made the point that millions of dummy rounds have been safely fired on movie sets in years past with very little incident, he does say that he would support new gun safety regulations. He also notes that most film productions have still been using real firearms with dummy rounds over plastic guns and similar props because that's "what audiences want," but he admits that there needs to be some modifications to the current safety regulations to better ensure that what happened to Halyna Hutchins, who was "loved and admired" by many, won't happen to anyone else.

“The thing to remember is that guns are fired in films because that’s what audiences want. Maybe not this crowd. Maybe not a festival crowd where you want to watch something that’s a little more complicated. There’s a place to modify the safety regulations we have to deal with and I’m very much looking forward to our decisions.”

At this time, no one has been charged criminally, but the Rust investigation is still open and ongoing.