Alec Baldwin Says ‘Rust’ Lawsuits Naming Him Are Targeting ‘Deep-Pocket Litigants’

etcanada.com:

Alec Baldwin is speaking out about lawsuits stemming from the accidental shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the film “Rust” last year.

Appearing at an event at the Boulder International Film Festival on Saturday, the actor, who is billed as a special-guest programmer at the fest, said that lawsuits, which have named him, are targeting “deep-pocket litigants,” and not necessarily those most responsible for the tragedy. READ MORE: Lawyer Of Late Cinematographer’s Family Blasts ‘Reckless’ Alec Baldwin: ‘He’s Blaming Others’ “What you have is a certain group of people, litigants and whatever, on whatever side, who their attitude is, ‘Well, the people who likely seem negligent have no money and the people who have money are not negligent,'” he said, according to CNN. “All my career, without incident, I’ve relied on the safety experts there to declare the gun safe and never had a problem, and this happened.” Baldwin was handling a prop gun, which was loaded without his knowledge on the set of “Rust”.

It discharged and killed Hutchins, and wounded the film’s director Joel Souza. “Of course, this is to me sometimes it’s, it’s so surreal, I don’t even know what to say,” he continued. “When someone, whose job is to ensure the safety of a weapon, hands someone else, whose job is to be the secondary layer of protection for safety of a weapon, and they hand you that weapon, you declare that that weapon is safe. “That’s how I’ve done it my whole life because you’re not allowed as an actor to declare the weapon… I mean, the joke is, you don’t want the actors doing the safety check.