Alec Baldwin Claims Hilaria Baldwin ‘Suffered Tremendously’ During His ‘Rust’ Trial

Actor Alec Baldwin faced 18 months behind bars in connection with the death of "Rust" cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who passed away on October 21, 2021, but his trial was cut short in July after a judge ruled that the prosecution had knowingly withheld information from the defense.

Armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was already sentenced to the state maximum of 18 months behind bars after a jury spent less than three hours finding her guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Prosecutors had alleged that she put live ammunition in the gun that Baldwin was holding on the set of the Western film.

Although the "30 Rock" actor was on trial, in December, he claimed that his wife, Hilaria Baldwin, was the one "in pain" during his legal battle.

Months after his “Rust” criminal case ended, Alec Baldwin appeared on the “Fail Better with David Duchovny” podcast to talk about the impact that the trial had on his family, especially his wife. The “Supercell” actor didn’t hesitate when he said, “I owe my wife everything.”

"She is the most spiritually ascended human being I've ever met, and she was kind to me and supportive of me," he explained in comments transcribed by Peoplemagazine. "She was frustrated. She was in pain. She suffered tremendously."

"You're a guy, you fall in love with somebody, and you're like, 'What can I do to make my wife safe?' And I couldn't do anything to stop what was happening to me," he added. The couple are parents to seven children; the actor is also a father to model Ireland Baldwin, whom he shared with ex-wife Kim Basinger.

Elsewhere on the podcast, the “Beetlejuice” actor told David Duchovny that he was “grateful” to Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer, who not only dismissed the case with prejudice but also shot down a prosecutor’s attempt at an appeal.

"The judge canceled the case. She ruled that it was dismissed with prejudice, which I'm very grateful for ... it was, I think, a very informed decision on her part,” he said. “But if I'd gone all the way and gotten a verdict, that's a little bit better, 'cause a bunch of people in the jury [would've] considered the facts and we would've presented so much more."

"So for me, I'm gonna take a break,” he added. “I don't wanna talk about this for a while. I wanna kind of like, you know, take a nap.”

This isn’t the first time that Baldwin has opened up about the impact that the trial had on his large family. In November, he told Varietythat the trial was “the most difficult thing” that he ever had to deal with.

“Beyond the victims themselves, the thing that most pains me is what it did to my wife. My wife has been very, very traumatized from this,” he said at the time.

“There has been a lot of pain," he continued. "When you are married to somebody and everything was going fairly well and we had seven kids … and the floor falls out. It’s very frightening and very disturbing.”

He went on to say, “And we are trying to get the wind in our sails, to get away from this stuff. Because the film doesn’t stand by itself. It’s always going to be overshadowed by this.”

Baldwin has insisted that he never pulled the trigger on the "Rust" gun. In court documents obtained by The Blast, his legal team took aim at an FBI forensics report that concluded that the trigger had to be pulled for the gun to fire. However, the gun was damaged during the testing, making it impossible for the defense to conduct their own examination of the firearm.

“Government agents knew that the firearm would not survive their clumsy ‘tests’ intact," his legal team wrote in a May 6 motion. "They said so explicitly in emails.”

“But at the insistence of prosecutors eager to prove a celebrity’s guilt, they nevertheless blundered ahead without preserving the original state of the firearm through photographs, video or other means; without informing Baldwin or his counsel they were conducting destructive testing; and without any realistic prospect that bludgeoning the gun would reveal whether Baldwin had pulled the trigger on the day of the accident,” they continued, adding that “the destruction of potentially exculpatory evidence violates due process.”

In response to the legal challenge, “Rust” prosecutors argued that the actor’s due process was not violated and maintained that his legal team had not shown if the gun “is exculpatory or potentially exculpatory.” Lead prosecutor Kari T. Morrissey also insisted that the FBI “carefully documented” the condition of the gun before they began their testing.

Although the judge allowed the case to proceed to trial, she dismissed the case with prejudice on the third day of witness testimony after it was revealed that the prosecution knew about bullets that had been handed over to law enforcement after Hannah Gutierrez-Reed's trial. This evidence was filed under a different case number and was never disclosed to the defense.

Although Baldwin will never face criminal consequences for his role in the shooting, he is still named in several lawsuits filed by Halyna Hutchins' family and various "Rust" cast and crew members.