“Rust” director Joel Souza was not compelled to tune into Alec Baldwin’s new reality TV show.
Souza, 51, spoke about Baldwin and the series in a new interview with The Guardian published Monday.
“Rust” arrives in theaters on Friday, three and a half years after Souza and cinematographer Halyna Hutchins were shot when a prop gun held by Baldwin, who stars in the film, accidentally went off during a rehearsal. Hutchins died from her injuries. She was 42.
“The Baldwins” — which follows Alec, 67, his wife Hilaria, 41, and their seven children — debuted February 23 on TLC.
“I didn’t watch ‘The Baldwins.’ I think I was busy hitting myself in the face with a frying pan that night,” Souza said of the show’s premiere night.
The filmmaker previously said of Baldwin, “We’re not friends. We’re not enemies. There’s no relationship.”
Baldwin and Hilaria both discussed the “Rust” shooting and its aftermath on their TLC series.
“This has been just surreal,” the “Crescent City” star told his wife in the show’s first episode. “I mean, I can’t even believe that we’re going through this, and I always feel more in pain about you than me, because I think to myself, well, you know, I’m going to try to my best to just get through it, and I think what it’s done to you and how much it’s hurt you and everything.”
Baldwin reflected further on life after the “Rust” shooting in one of the episode’s confessional interviews.
“This past year was just terrible,” he admitted. “There were times I’d lay in bed. I’d go, ‘Wow, my kids. I can’t get up.’ That’s not like me. I’m not like that at all, not in any way am I like that. Never.”
Referring to how her husband’s mood changed after he was charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the shooting, Hilaria said, “Everyone who is close to Alec has seen his mental health decline.”
She also revealed that the star’s OCD got worse.
“He was diagnosed with PTSD, and he says in his darkest moments, ‘If an accident had to have happened this day, why am I still here? Why couldn’t it have been me?’” Hilaria recalled.
Baldwin’s manslaughter case was dismissed by a judge in December after his attorneys argued that the prosecutor and law enforcement concealed evidence about the source of the live round that killed Hutchins in 2021.
The armorer on “Rust” — Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, 28 — was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 18 months in prison. The film’s first assistant director, David Halls pled guilty to the charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon last March. He was sentenced to six months of probation.
