The tears to save Baldwin’s career
In his first interview since the fatal on-set shooting, the actor gave the performance of his life, says chief film critic Robbie Collin
For Alec Baldwin, the winner of three primetime comedy Emmys and nominee for 13 more, it was an against-type performance. Eyes shining with sincerity, face partshrouded in shadow, the usually suave, sardonic 63-year-old actor spoke in a voice gravelly with sorrow, as a cello played plaintively in the background.
“I would go to any lengths to undo what happened,” he said, before repeating the line for emphasis – a seasoned performer’s instinctive second take.
Baldwin was giving his first interview about the fatal shooting six weeks ago on the set of the independent western Rust, in which a pistol held by the actor discharged during a scene, wounding the film’s director, Joel Souza, and killing its cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins.
One of the new details to emerge from the interview, given to the ABC News presenter George Stephanopoulos, was Baldwin’s claim that he did not in fact pull the gun’s trigger, but the release of the firing mechanism appeared to be the result of a mechanical fault of some sort. “I let go of the hammer of the gun and the gun goes off,” he said – again repeating the line to ensure that it landed.
With a formal investigation under way, it was no surprise that Baldwin’s answers sounded – to this critic’s ears, at least – carefully scripted. Any person who played an instrumental role in the death of another would surely feel strong feelings of guilt, however unwitting that role might have been. But when asked if he felt guilt, Baldwin instantly said he did not, adding: “Someone is responsible for what happened and I can’t say who that is, but I know it’s not me.” Later on, he almost sounded like a detective summarising the plot before a drawing room of suspects. “There is only one question to be resolved: where did the live round come from?” he mused. But, of course, there are many more, including the matter of his own responsibility as a producer for the running of a safe and responsible set. Later still, Stephanopoulos asked Baldwin if he believed his career was
‘Given the horrible specifics, Baldwin is right to rule out ever filming with a gun again’
over as a result of the incident: Baldwin said it could be. “I couldn’t give a s--about my career anymore,” he added.
Yet the very fact of this extremely cinematic outpouring would suggest that he does. There were any number of possible forums in which Baldwin could have addressed this tragic accident, from a newspaper interview to a statement in concert with the IATSE film crew union, which had been raising the alarm about unsafe conditions on sets just as the Rust
shooting took place. Instead, he chose a sit-down TV interview which will serve as the centrepiece of a two-hour primetime show about the shooting, due to air in the US next week.
A three-part preview of the broadcast was posted yesterday on the ABC News Youtube channel. And with its solemn lighting and careful dialogue, the scene felt as calculated as the climax of an Oscar-hungry drama – the bit where the stoic hero finally breaks down and lays out his regrets while the audience gropes for the Kleenex.
There is no question that Baldwin’s distress over the shooting is genuine. How could it not be? Photographs taken in its immediate aftermath show a man doubled over in shock and despair. But that was not the Baldwin viewers saw on ABC, with a full face of make-up and silvering hair swept soberly back. Though this was Alec Baldwin as himself, he was still giving a performance – one which will determine how, or even if, the public will be able to accept him on their screens in the years ahead.
Baldwin’s career, which ranged across stage, film and television, had for a long time been a haphazard enterprise. For every memorable role – his viperish sales guru in Glengarry Glen Ross, the heroic CIA analyst Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October, juicy supporting parts for Scorsese and Allen – there were countless voice parts and walk-ons that seemed to prevent the idea cohering of a classic “Baldwin type”.
But that changed in the mid-2000s when he was cast in the sitcom 30 Rock
as the TV executive Jack Donaghy, a louche curmudgeon who seemed a perfect fit for Baldwin’ s then under exploited comic gifts. That role set the tone for his mid-career stardom. There was a Nancy Meyers romantic comedy with Meryl Streep, It’s Complicated; the lead vocal role in the Boss Baby animated films; and, after 2016, a steady gig playing Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live.
He was also (at least until recently) working on a sitcom with the Frasier
star Kelsey Grammer about former college roommates who reunite in middle age and live out their younger selves’ fantasies. But the Rust shooting has rendered that version of Baldwin defunct.
For as long as he is associated with the tragedy – and, given the horrible specifics of the case, it’s hard to imagine how the association might shift in the short to medium term – Baldwin can no longer sell himself to an audience on those breezy, bumptious terms.
Could the ABC interview be the first step in feeling out a new screen persona, and might it succeed? It’s hard to say, since little in recent Hollywood history is remotely comparable to Baldwin’s plight.
Of course, there have been stars whose eventful personal lives have momentarily scrambled their box office USPS. In June 1995, Hugh Grant found his wholesomely ruffled heartthrob image compromised by a dalliance with a Los Angeles prostitute. But Grant, who had been riding high on the success of Four Weddings and a Funeral, was able to lean into the blunder: his confessional interview with Jay Leno on The Tonight Show a month later was a masterclass in British cringe comedy; it couldn’t have been better scripted by Richard Curtis. After a tactical three-year break, he was the romantic lead in Mickey Blue Eyes and Notting Hill. And a recurring part in the Bridget Jones films proudly riffed on his newly caddish profile.
Then there was Tom Cruise’s mid-noughties pivot into eccentricity, following his sofa-bouncing appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2005, during which he professed his undying love for the actress Katie Holmes. (They wed the following year, and divorced in 2012.) That put paid to Cruise’s credibility as a romantic lead: no chance of another Jerry Maguire after that. But instead, he became Hollywood’s premier puppyish crackpot, scaling the Burj Khalifa and dangling from aeroplanes in the Mission: Impossible films. Again, though, the shift in public perception was essentially benign: it could be accommodated, or even embraced, in a way the stark horror of Baldwin’s situation cannot.
One line in Baldwin’s interview did have the ring of blunt, unrehearsed truth. “I can’t imagine I would ever do a movie that had a gun in it again,” he said. That will narrow his options still further, though he’s right to rule it out: even setting aside the trauma of making the thing, the shell of the fiction would instantly crack. What’s left is wounded gravitas and stony remorse – and if he’s minded to play it, an audience will watch.