Alec Baldwin is guilty — of being a misogynistic, homophobic, leftist phony who refuses to take a whit of responsibility for the 2021 death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins at his hands. He’s married to a woman who can’t accept that her ethnicity is as exotic as a houseplant.
But a culpable killer? I don’t think so.
Baldwin’s self-regard is as dizzying as it is frightening. His bullying brand is as electrifying as it is evil. And even though Hutchins died at age 42 — shot to death by a gun that the actor and producer, 64, pointed at her chest in front of poorly trained colleagues, eyewitnesses and God on the New Mexico set of his latest starrer “Rust” — he nonsensically claims he never pulled the trigger and the pistol simply “went off” by itself. Alec blames everyone, from the lowliest cast member to the victim herself, for the unspeakable tragedy.
Anyone and everyone, that is, except himself.
But I predict he’ll walk away from the dead with a spring in his step and nary a hair out of place. For Alec Baldwin is coated in Teflon.
He’s run roughshod over puny photographers, female cops, flight attendants, and little old me for so long and hard without facing repercussions, career setbacks or jail time. Last week, he was charged, along with the film’s inexperienced armorer, with two counts of involuntary manslaughter. I don’t believe the charges will stick.
Faster than you can yell “Cold gun!,” Alec, I expect, will return to his greatest role as a snarling, spitting, spewing, cussing, punching, one-man hate crime. And here’s why:
Alec maintains that he had no clue that the gun he wielded on set was loaded with lethal bullets. Even though as a producer he’s technically responsible for on-set atrocities, jurors dazzled by his star power and persuaded by his acting chops are unlikely to nail him for crimes that could lock him up for up to five years upon conviction.
The latest on the film set shooting of Halyna Hutchins
- Explaining Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter charges, potential prison time
- Sneaky Hilaria Baldwin dupes crowd outside NYC home so Alec can flee after ‘Rust’ charges
- Alec Baldwin refuses to accept blame for the ‘Rust’ shooting that killed Halyna Hutchins
From the start, he’s painted himself not as a slaughterer but as another victim of anyone he can shamelessly throw under the Baldwin bus. In a series of woe-is-me interviews with admiring journos, he’s maintained his complete innocence, even as his legal strategy involves presenting himself as a martyr. It just might work.
Despite the horror, Alec is still set to star in “Rust” as the film resumes production, the movie’s lawyer has announced. And if film personnel trust the safety of his on-set presence, it sends a potent message that he’s no danger to anyone.
Finally, he’s been getting away with all sorts of rotten behavior for so many years, I have no expectation he’ll ever be called to account for anything.
It all started the day he called his then-11-year-old daughter, Ireland, with ex-wife Kim Basinger a “rude, thoughtless little pig” in an infamous 2007 voicemail.
Since then, he refused to shut off his cellphone on an airplane, then smashed a lavatory door in a fit of pique. He snarled profanities at two female cops who had the audacity to stop him for riding his bike the wrong way on a one-way street, threatening the safety of
pedestrians.
He’s roughed up photographers and allegedly shoved and struck in the face a 49-year-old Saab-driving nobody who had the nerve to nab the parking spot being saved near his East Village pad by a relative for Alec’s obscene, gas-guzzling Cadillac SUV. There was the time he called a British reporter a “toxic little queen’’ on Twitter and berated a photographer as a “c—k-sucking f-g.’’ (He said he called him a “fathead.’’ Sure.)
“Andrea Peyser, you are as bad a writer as you are filled with self-hatred,’’ he wrote in 2012, one of a series of unglued tweets that I choose to see as proof that he really cares!
With each escalating offense, he’s freed and excused, fawned over and coddled. Rinse, repeat. And now that there’s a body count, Alec Baldwin (real name: Alexander) blames others and narcissistically claims persecution.
With such a rich history of enabling by authorities, avid fans, and a wife who goes by Hilaria from Spain while she’s really Hillary from Boston, how are we ever to think his winning streak will end?
