Alec Baldwin reposted to his 2.4 million Instagram followers a Rust crew member’s lengthy statement about what happened on the set where cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was shot and killed, insisting the claims that of an unsafe film set are “bullshit.”
“I’m so sick of this narrative. I worked on this movie. The story being spun of us being overworked and surrounded by unsafe, chaotic conditions is bullshit,” crew member Terese Magpale Davis proclaimed in the statement.
While on the set of Rust, Baldwin was rehearsing with a gun that he was told did not contain live ammunition. The actor later pulled the trigger, fatally shooting Hutchins and wounding director, Joel Souza.
Davis went on to assert that the crew “never worked more than a 12.5 hour shoot day,” and that “most days were under 12.”
“The day Halyna died we had come off a 12 hour turnaround after an 11 hour day,” she added. “We had (including camera) gotten off by 6:30pm. We had just had a 56 hour weekend right before that. No one was too tired to do their jobs.”
Davis addressed reports of Rust‘s camera crew being denied hotel rooms near the film’s set and asked to travel up to 50 miles to get to work, stating that the camera crew complained because they “just didn’t feel [the hotels] were fancy enough,” not because they felt their working conditions were unsafe.
Davis said the camera crew “tried to renegotiate their contracts halfway through the show and hold the producers over a barrel by walking out.”
Davis also said that the “union rep” eventually “told production not to give in to the camera crew because they were demanding things the union does NOT require.”
As for Rust head armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, Davis said that while she wasn’t “the most experienced person,” she had “apprenticed to a well known armorer and had been in the same position on the same type of movie a few months before.”
Gutierrez-Reed has faced heavy scrutiny since the fatal shooting on set, given that she was one of the few people who handled the firearm before it was given to Baldwin.
Gutierrez-Reed was the subject of numerous complaints while handling weapons on the set of The Old Way — her first time as an armorer on a film set — just two months before taking her second job on the set of Rust.
Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said last week there was “some complacency” in how weapons were handled on the set. Investigators found around 500 rounds of ammunition — a mix of blanks, dummy rounds and suspected live rounds — even though the set’s firearms specialist, armorer Gutierrez Reed, said real ammo should never have been present.
“How do you suppose anyone will get experience? We all had a first and second job at one point or another,” Davis said.
“The misfires were accidental discharges, which are more common than you think,” Davis insisted. “The guns were checked immediately afterwards and the discharges were announced on set and apologized for (I was right there).”
Davis went on to say that production had “several safety meetings,” and that the assistant director “never seemed flippant about safety.”
Along with Gutierrez-Reed, Rust assistant director Dave Halls has also faced heavy backlash since the shooting, as he told Baldwin the firearm he gave him was a “cold gun” — meaning it didn’t have any live rounds in it.
Halls was reportedly fired from a previous job after a gun went off on a set and wounded a member of the film crew.
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Davis added that Halls was “stressed” due to the camera crew walkout, which she said had production an “hour and a half behind,” and so the assistant director “made the most horrible call he could make.”
Davis concluded her lengthy statement by affirming that “this was about gun safety,” and said gun safety is something crew members on film sets “could all stand to learn a little more about.”
This is not Baldwin’s first time sharing a post that points fingers at another crew member. Last week, the actor retweeted an article shared by the New York Times that isolates Halls’ role in the fatal shooting.
The investigation is still ongoing. Last week, Santa Fe District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies told NBC News’ Tom Llamas that Baldwin “pulled the trigger,” which doesn’t mean that charges will be filed against him, but it also “doesn’t mean they won’t.”
Over the weekend, Baldwin gave an unhinged on-camera interview — in which he snapped at his wife Hilaria for interrupting him — on the side of a road in Vermont, where he told paparazzi that Hutchins was his “friend.”
The Associated Press contributed to the article.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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