Alec Baldwin had “survivor’s guilt,” according to wife Hilaria, following the fatal shooting of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
On episode 2 of the married couple’s TLC reality show The Baldwins, Hilaria, 41, recalled receiving alarming messages from her husband the day after the October 2021 incident. Alec, 66, was rehearsing for the Western film in New Mexico when a prop gun he was holding accidentally fired, killing Hutchins and injuring director Joel Souza. The actor-producer maintained that he did not pull the trigger and could not have known the gun contained live ammunition instead of dummy rounds.
“I found these text messages the other day between us, you know, the day after,” recalls Hilaria on camera. “And [Alec] said he wanted to kill himself.” In a confessional, Hilaria adds that Alec “has survivor’s guilt” following the fatal incident. “You’re involved in this thing that nobody could even possibly imagine. And so he goes back to that day, he wishes it were him. He would change places [with Hutchins] in a second.”The Baldwins, which premiered on TLC on Feb. 23, follows Alec, Hilaria and their seven children in New York City. (Alec also shares daughter Ireland with ex-wife Kim Basinger.) The reality series includes recollections from the couple about how the incident and Alec’s ensuing involuntary manslaughter trial — dismissed last July — affected the family.
“He’ll never be the same,” says Hilaria in episode 2. “This has affected his health and his mental health tremendously the past few years. All of a sudden, he has started having heart problems. He’s been hospitalized multiple times.”
The yoga instructor also recalls a time Alec “fainted,” after which she was “shaking him. It’s hard sometimes. But, you know, hopefully we’re in the hardest but the tail end of it.”After the dismissal of Alec’s case — and the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, being convicted of involuntary manslaughter last March for her role in Hutchins’ death — the 30 Rock Emmy winner filed a lawsuit against its prosecutors, investigators and others, accusing them of “malicious abuse of process, intentional spoliation of evidence, defamation, and violation of the New Mexico Civil Rights Act.” His suit claims the defendants “sought at every turn to scapegoat Baldwin for the acts and omissions of others, regardless of the evidence or the law.”
