As Alec Baldwin faces trial in New Mexico next month in the October 2021 shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, he’s also dealing with the reality that he’s in dire financial straights.
According to a New York Times report on Baldwin’s trial, which starts July 8, the 66-year-old film and TV actor is struggling to support his controversial influencer wife Hilaria Baldwin and their seven young children, while also covering the mounting legal expenses associated with Hutchins’ death, which occurred when he was handling a gun that accidentally discharged on the set of the Western film “Rust.”
Among Baldwin’s many challenges, he’s late paying his portion of the multimillion-dollar civil settlement owed to Hutchins’ family for a wrongful death lawsuit her husband brought in 2022, according to the New York Times.
PARK CITY, UT – JANUARY 28: Halyna Hutchins attends the SAGindie Sundance Filmmakers Reception at Cafe Terigo on January 28, 2019 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Fred Hayes/Getty Images for SAGindie)
Baldwin was both the star of “Rust” and one of its producers. For reasons that remain a mystery, a revolver that Baldwin was using during a rehearsal held a live round. When the gun discharged, the round fatally injured Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza.
In his lawsuit, Hutchins’ husband, Matthew Hutchins, accused Baldwin, Rust Movie Productions and other producers of reckless conduct and cost-cutting measures that endangered the crew, including failing to follow basic industry standard safety checks and gun safety rules. Hutchins, Baldwin and the other producers subsequently reached a legal settlement, though the exact amount of the settlement remains confidential.
Matthew Hutchins’s lawyer, Brian Panish, told the Times that his client is still awaiting payment from Baldwin, leading them to consider different options. They include suing Baldwin for breach of agreement or resuming their original civil suit.
But as Baldwin potentially faces another costly lawsuit, and presumably needs to pay a high-priced team of criminal defense attorneys, he’s also dealing with the prospect of not being able to work at all for a while. If a jury finds him guilty of involuntary manslaughter, he could be sentenced to up to 18 months in prison.
US actor Alec Baldwin and his wife Hilaria Baldwin arrive for the PEN America Literary Gala at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City on May 18, 2023. This year’s gala, hosted by US comedian Colin Jost, is honoring Canadian writer and producer Lorne Michaels. (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP) (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)
Perhaps it’s no surprise then that Alec and Hilaria Baldwin recently announced that they and their seven young children will star in a reality TV show, to air on TLC, starting in 2025.
The news about the reality TV show is sure to help keep Baldwin in the center of the “media maelstrom” that has engulfed his public persona since Hutchins’ death. Baldwin’s many critics would say that the outspoken actor has brought much of the unwanted attention on himself, with his ill-advised attempts to control the narrative and to clear his name, as the New York Times said.
Initially, there there was an assumption in legal circles that Baldwin did not commit a crime and that Hutchins’ death was a tragic accident, the Times said. Still, Baldwin sunk “into despair” as he grieved over accidentally killing someone. He also was “coming to terms with the cascading collateral damage to his own life,” including the loss of future film and TV roles.
The Times said he was eager to change the growing narrative about the shooting — that “Rust” was a “rushed, seat-of-the-pants production” and that it was somehow his fault he didn’t know there was a live round in his revolver.
That’s when Baldwin decided to do an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in December 2021. During the interview, Baldwin controversially claimed that he pointed the gun in Hutchins’ direction at her urging — because she wanted to get the right camera angle. He also insisted that he didn’t pull the trigger, an assertion that didn’t make sense to gun experts.
The interview proved to be “a costly miscalculation,” prompting New Mexico District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies to see Baldwin as being “unrepentant, entitled and maybe even dishonest,” the Times reported. She won a grand jury indictment in January, charging Baldwin with involuntary manslaughter. If Baldwins’ attorneys fail in their latest effort to have the charges dismissed, the actor will go on trial, starting July 8.
Meanwhile, Baldwin’s “financial outlook has continued to darken.” He’s begun “shifting around some of his real estate assets,” according to the Times and other reports. He bought a 55-acre farm in southern Vermont for $1.75 million, while selling his lake house in upstate New York for $530,000. He also put his beloved, 10-acre estate in the Hamptons on the market for $29 million, though he recently slashed the price by $10 million.
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The New York Times pointed out that Baldwin took on the role in “Rust,” at a time when he was long past his leading-man prime. He also took on another role in his personal life — as the patriarch of a growing young family, “reproducing the sort of large Irish Catholic family he had grown up in on Long Island”, the Times said.
When he first began working on “Rust,” he and Hilaria Baldwin had four young children. In the five years since, they’ve had three more children, one born via surrogate. Baldwin has joked in interviews that he needs to keep working to support his family, though he’s also struggled to get high-profile projects off the ground, such as a TV sitcom with Kelsey Grammar. He’s also faced questions about whether he was complicit in his wife’s bizarre Spanish heritage scandal, in which she was revealed to have spent the better part of a decade falsely promoting herself as being raised in that country or being part-Spanish.
But Baldwin and his wife also have persisted in their efforts to create a celebrity brand around them being the adoring parents to multiple young children. Now it appears that they intend to use their children and their harried family life to attract viewers to a reality TV show that may help cover some of their expenses.
One industry veteran told the Times that he wouldn’t be surprised to see Baldwin still enjoy a career comeback, regardless of what happens with the trial. The actor has rebounded from other controversies he’s faced, “and even in an era of grievance and polarization, scandals have a short half-life.”
“The industry likes him,” Terry Press, a marketing consultant and former studio head, told the Times. ““We are in a consequence-free environment, and he has plenty of good will. He will work again.”