The Trial Of Alec Baldwin director says actor's reputation provoked Rust manslaughter charge

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Rory Kennedy, who directed this year’s documentary The Trial Of Alec Baldwin, claims that Baldwin’s prosecution stemmed less from the evidence that the actor acted improperly on the Rust set than from the New Mexico prosecutors’ animus. “There were all considered, thoughtful reasons why everything in the film is in the film,” says Kennedy of the documentary. “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.”

At his highly publicized trial in 2024, charges against Baldwin were dismissed after the judge found that prosecutors had deliberately withheld vital information from Baldwin’s defense team. Baldwin has filed a lawsuit for wrongful prosecution, while the often infuriatingly unfocused The Trial Of Alec Baldwin‘s most damning footage shows prosecutor Kari T. Morrisey unsuccessfully concealing her contempt for Baldwin on the stand. Meanwhile, Rust’s prop supervisor Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was sentenced in 2024 to 18 months in jail for improperly bringing live ammunition to the film’s set. 

For Kennedy, Baldwin’s long, documented history of alienating public and private behavior was the impetus for so much ire and legal action coming the actor’s way. Says Kennedy, “[W]e 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.” The director notes that the disclaimer at the beginning of the film that Baldwin had no input into the production and was not being compensated was added, “Because of who Alec is and how people feel about him, and also, frankly, just the sensitivity of this particular film.” Baldwin infamously told Good Morning America in the wake of the shooting that he felt remorse but “no guilt” over Hutchins’ death, a PR disaster in keeping with the notably prickly actor’s whole deal.