Hilaria Baldwin says she and Alec Baldwin have had difficult conversations with their eldest children about the Rust shooting.
Hilaria told Extra that she and her husband told Carmen, 9 and Rafael, 7 about the Oct. 21, 2021 death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. Alec, the film’s star and producer, was rehearsing with a prop gun that contained a live round, which fatally killed Hutchins. He has maintained that he never pulled the trigger.
“We’re not OK,” Hilaria, 38, said over a year after the shooting. “We can’t be OK. No one is OK. It was, and is, a tragedy that nobody could ever have imagined.” She called Hutchins “an incredible, incredible woman in so many different ways” and said her death impacts so many — her young son with husband Matthew Hutchins, their family, her co-workers, fans and everyone who loved her.
The Witches Anonymous podcast host said she’s obviously also concerned for 64-year-old Alec, admitting he’s had nightmares about the tragedy.
“I worry about him,” she admitted. “I mean, can you imagine? Nobody can… When you go through something hard … not every day is going to be the same. You have moments … that are very hard. Nights are hard. Nightmares are hard.” She said she shows her support of her husband of 10 years by saying, “I’m here and I’m going to take care of you — and I said that from the moment we realized what had happened.”
Hilaria said they put on a united front when it came to telling Carmen and Rafael, not revealing a timeline for which the initial conversation took place.
“There is no way that you can explain this because it is awful,” she said. “I thought I was going to do this without Alec and he said, ‘No, I can’t be a coward. I have to be there…'”
While they told them, Carmen said, “‘Why are you telling me this? … I want to un-know this,'” Hilaria recalled. “She used the word ‘un-know,’ and Alec said, ‘I want to un-know it, too.’ I think everyone wants to un-know it … because it’s real.”
In early October, it was announced the film would resume production after a settlement was reached with Halyna’s husband, who will serve as a producer.
“We can go forward and talk about gun safety on sets, and try to figure out how this crazy thing happened, and we can go forward and honor Halyna,” Hilaria said. “We can remember her, continuing her legacy for her, for her family and we can take care of everybody who’s still here who is extraordinarily damaged by this awful tragedy. That’s all that we can do, but we can’t un-know it.”
Alec was rehearsing a scene for the low-budget western film on the New Mexico set when he said he was given what he was told was a “cold gun,” containing no ammunition. At what he said was Hutchins’s instruction, he cocked the vintage gun, but claims he did not pull the trigger and it discharged. The gun contained a live round, which never should have been on the set let alone in the prop gun, which fatally shot Hutchins and also hit director Joel Souza, who survived. An FBI forensics report stated that the gun could not have been fired without pulling the trigger.
There have been several lawsuits over alleged safety issues in the wake of the shooting, including Hutchins’s widower’s wrongful death case, which was settled. Alec filed his own in November, alleging negligence of several of the film’s crew members in an attempt to “clear his name.”
For over a year, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department investigated the shooting. In late October, investigators have turned over the case to Santa Fe First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies, who will decide whether to press criminal charges against anyone involved in the shooting.
Baldwin, who “hired a private investigator” to do his own investigation, has said he doesn’t believe he will face any criminal charges.
Amid the tragedy, Hilaria and Alec have also had beautiful moments, like the birth of their seventh child in September. (Alec is also dad to model Ireland Baldwin from his marriage to Kim Basinger.) Hilaria said she named the baby girl Ilaria after herself because “I figured, men do it — why can’t I do it, too?”
As for having more kids, she said anything is possible (“I would say we’re done, but I said we were done with six”). She’s waiting for Alec to “do his part,” alluding to a vasectomy, but until that happens, “things can happen.”
