In 2021 on the set of independent feature film Rust, cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot after a live round was discharged from a prop gun that was being used by the film’s star, Alec Baldwin. After the tragedy, there was near-continuous coverage of the shooting, investigation and subsequent legal fallout, including in the lead-up to and during Baldwin’s 2024 involuntary manslaughter trial.
But when the case went to trial in July 2024 and was quickly dismissed with prejudice after the judge discovered that the prosecution had improperly withheld evidence from Baldwin’s defense team, it seemed to quickly fall out of the public view. This was after a sudden end after years of breathless analysis and speculation.
“The trial ended on a Friday, and then Trump got shot. So that pulled a lot of the attention of the press away from this storyline, and everybody got consumed by that, understandably,” explains documentarian Rory Kennedy, who earlier this month released her latest feature, The Trial of Alec Baldwin, which brings the Rust shooting case back to the forefront.
But Kennedy’s film is not a straight retelling of the shooting nor of Baldwin’s criminal cases, which included a 2023 involuntary manslaughter charge that prosecutors later dropped and the second involuntary manslaughter charge that went to trial. Part biopic and part crime procedural, The Trial of Alec Baldwin is ultimately an in-depth exploration of how a person’s public image can come to influence even the supposed impartiality of legal proceedings.
Before the theatrical release of her documentary, Kennedy, whose prolific filmmaking career includes documentaries Ethel and Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, talked to THR about how the documentary came about and attempting to stay incognito during the trial.
Take me through the inception of the documentary.
When I heard and saw what happened, I was just so upset. Obviously, first and foremost, for Halyna and her family and her child. And I knew Alec. I would say I was friendly with Alec for many years, but I wouldn’t quite say we were friends. I would run into him enough that we knew each other. I thought this is an interesting story, and we should approach Alec. Part of it is that there really hadn’t been a documentary about Alec Baldwin himself. He’s such a gifted actor, and he’s also just kind of a fascinating character, so we felt like he was deserving. Then, we also were looking at the media frenzy around [the case], and witnessing how the judgment of people online seemed to be trickling up and impacting the legal case, potentially.
As a filmmaker, what were you hoping to accomplish with the doc?
Sometimes with these documentaries you have no idea where they’re going to go or how they’re going to play out or why you’re doing it. It just seemed like there was enough going on that could be revelatory about a number of things in the world today. We approached Alec about doing the documentary and, initially, he was resistant to the idea. He didn’t exactly say no, but he definitely didn’t say yes. And then he came back to us about six weeks or two months later, when he was heading to Montana to resume the filming of Rust, which he was compelled to do legally, and said that he was open to us doing a documentary. I said that I would only do it if we had full editorial control with full access and he had no financial compensation. He agreed to all of that immediately.
You open the film with a title card that says that Alec Baldwin didn’t have editorial control over the documentary, nor was he compensated for participating. Why was it important to say up top?
Because of who Alec is and how people feel about him, and also, frankly, just the sensitivity of this particular film. And we were trying to always be as thoughtful as we can about Halyna and her family and I didn’t want people to feel like this was a documentary that was commissioned by Alec to redeem him. I think that there were people who came to the story with that assumption, and then even people who watched the film would ask this question, so I felt like it was important to come out of the gate saying he had nothing to do with this in terms of editorial control. And frankly, when he first watched the film, he didn’t particularly like it.
What was your understanding of Alec’s life and public perception of him heading into this doc?
I had a sense of his history, and his life being a little bit of a roller coaster. He’s starring in 30 Rock, and people go nuts for him, and he’s like the most popular guy on television. And then he does the voicemail, and he’s the most hated person. [ In 2007, a recording of a voicemail Baldwin left for his 11-year-old daughter calling her “rude, thoughtless little pig” leaked to TMZ.] Part of what made this story interesting is when a celebrity gets into a situation like this, and let’s just kind of assume going into it that he’s innocent, that this was a total accident, how does that play itself out? How can these opinions impact somebody’s career or somebody’s legal standing? What does it say about our legal systems? What does it say about how social media can trickle up? What does that mean if we’ve taken the question of somebody’s innocence or guilt out of the courts and into this other arena?
I know you mentioned Alec initially turned you down and then reapproached you about a doc as he was going to resume filming on Rust. Why did Alec ultimately agree to the doc?
I don’t know why he chose in that moment to come back to me, but I do think having spent now a good amount of time with Alec, he is invested in telling his side of the story. I think what he was seeing and what he was reading didn’t represent what he felt was true. I made this film about him, and so in some ways you’re speaking for somebody, but I really have great reservations about speaking for somebody in this kind of way. So, I think it is a better question for him.
You have a whole section of your film dedicated to the women in his life, from his first marriage to his relationship with his daughter, Ireland. Why was that important to include?
That particular storyline leads to the voicemail, and the voicemail was on trial. And it’s very hard to make sense of the voicemail without understanding his relationship with Kim [Basinger]. There were all considered thoughtful reasons why everything in the film is in the film. I think that we wanted to show that if this was Tom Hanks or Julia Roberts, I don’t think this would have gone to trial. I think that Alec Baldwin was on trial because of who Alec Baldwin is and what his history is, and you see that play itself out in the courtroom at the end. You also need to remind people about his accomplishments and how extraordinarily talented and gifted he is to also show all the sides of him that were being considered in the final trial.
In the film, you have police body cam footage from the set shortly after the shooting, and you have footage from inside the police station when Alec finds out Halyna has died. In all the coverage of the trial, I don’t remember ever seeing this footage. What was it like as a filmmaker seeing that footage for the first time?
The fact that we had access to what happened that day is amazing to me.
How did you get access to it?
It’s in the public domain, but you have to dig for it. I think this storyline, people lost track of it because of the shooting of Trump, so I just don’t think there was a lot of follow-up by the reporters who were covering the case.
Were you in the room for the trial?
You couldn’t film in the room independently, but you could opt in to pay for up to three cameras in the room. I don’t know who else did, but we got all three cameras. I opted not to be in the courtroom. I was really trying to stay on the down low that we were even doing this documentary. There were so many paparazzi around, and I didn’t want to be a part of that story at all or to in any way jeopardize the case. There was a concern that there was a reading that I had been hired by Alec to make this film. The Daily Mail or something had caught me filming him and put a story out there that he had hired me.
You have been screening this film for audiences for about a year now. Is there anything that has surprised you in terms of what people are finding through your documentary?
I think people who didn’t like Alec going into it, most of them still don’t like Alec when they leave it. And people who liked Alec going into it like him when they leave it. But I think most people, even if they didn’t like Alec, feel like there was a miscarriage of justice.