‘Rust’ Employees Defend Working Conditions of Set Where Alec Baldwin’s Gun Misfired

A group of 25 professionals who worked on the filming of Rust, the movie where Alec Baldwin accidentally killed director of photography Halyna Hutchins, defended the working conditions and safety measures on set in a letter.

The letter, published this Thursday on Alec Baldwin’s own Instagram profile, includes the names of the employees, who claim that they have “not been sanctioned or influenced in any way by the producers.”

So far, statements by some members of the film crew described a precarious work environment in which complaints where piling up and that caused half a dozen employees to resign on the same day of the incident.

However, this group of workers details a radically different version of the conditions. “The working morale on set was high,” they claim in the letter.

“The work was hard, but meaningful. We were inspired by the quality of the screenplay and the performances of the cast. Halyna’s work ethic was inspiring and we were working to our highest ability to support her vision,” they add.

According to these workers, working hours and wages were “consistent with expectations” and location and transportation requirements were “well understood.”

“We kindly request that your speculation and generalizations about us and our colleagues be sympathetic until an investigation is concluded,” they ask.

On the other hand, Baldwin served as host this Thursday night at the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope gala, held in New York, where he made no mention of the incident.

Last week, the actor gave a prime-time interview in which he said he wasn’t aware that he had shot Halyna Hutchins until minutes after the incident.

“I thought to myself, ‘Did she faint’? The notion that there was a live round in that gun did not dawn on me till probably 45 minutes to an hour later,” he explained.

“Someone put a live bullet in a gun, a bullet that wasn’t even supposed to be on the property,” he stated.

For his part, Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said last month that he allegedly had found about 500 rounds of ammunition on the set, including a mix of “suspected live rounds, blanks, and dummy bullets.”