Actor Nicolas Cage, in an appearance in the Hollywood Reporter’s Actor’s Roundtable, spoke out about Alec Baldwin shooting cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the Rust movie set and said actors “need to know how to use a gun.”
He covered some basics that actors need to know: “You need to know how to ride a horse. You need to know how to fight. You’re going to do fight scenes. You need to know how to ride a motorcycle. You need to know how to use a stick shift and drive sports cars, and you do need to know how to use a gun. You do.”
Cage added: “You need to take the time to know what the procedure is. Those are part of the job profiles. Now, the stuntman and the movie star are two jobs that co-exist. Every stuntman needs to be a movie star and every movie star needs to be a stuntman. That’s just part of the profile. And that’s all I’m gonna say about it.”
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On October 21, 2021, a prop gun — which was a single action revolver — discharged while Alec Baldwin practiced drawing it and getting it on target. Hutchins was killed and director Joel Souza was wounded in the incident.
On December 3, 2021, Breitbart News reported on an interview Baldwin granted to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in which Baldwin admitted that he cocked the revolver but claimed he did not pull the trigger.
Baldwin said, “I’m holding the gun where she [Hutchins] told me to hold it.”
He added, “In the scene [being rehearsed] I would have cocked the gun, and I said, ‘Do you want to see that? And she said yes. So I take the gun and I sort of cock the gun, I’m not going to pull the trigger.”
Alec Baldwin said Hutchins then had him adjust the angle at which he was holding the revolver.
He then told Stephanopoulos, “I cock the gun and I go, ‘Can you see that? Can you see that? Can you see that?’ And I let go of the hammer of the gun and the gun goes off.”
Baldwin also told Stephanopoulos, “The trigger wasn’t pulled. I didn’t pull the trigger.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.