Alec & Hilaria Against the World

A year and a half after the shooting death of Halyna Hutchins, Alec Baldwin is back on set to finish Rust. Throughout the şaga, his marriage has taken on a starring role.

- By Reeves Wiedeman

Late in the day on October 21, 2021, Alec Baldwin was sitting alone in an interrogation room at the Santa Fe County sheriff's office, trying to get ahold of his wife, Hilaria. "Can you hear me?" Alec asked quietly. "Can you hear me? Can you hear me?”

Baldwin had just come from the set of Rust, the low-budget western in which he was playing a moody patriarch dealing with the aftermath of an accidental killing.

At the sheriff's office, he was wearing the bushy white beard he grew for the part and a navy-blue T-shirt and dark jeans, having changed out of his costume, which was covered in fake blood and now considered evidence in a criminal investigation. Just a few hours earlier, Baldwin had shot Joel Souza, the film's director, and Halyna Hutchins, its cinematographer, with a Colt.45 that wasn't supposed to be loaded. Souza and Hutchins were in the hospital, and Baldwin didn't yet know that Hutchins had just been pronounced dead.

Baldwin called his wife again. "How is everyone at home?" he asked after getting through. "How are the kids?" "The kids are great, the kids are great," Hilaria said before Alec cut her off.

"Hold on a second, please," Alec said. He asked if Hilaria had told their eldest child what happened. She hadn't. Hilaria and their kids had been planning to join Alec in New Mexico. Their 8-year-old daughter was even scheduled to film a small role. Now, Alec was going to have to stay in Santa Fe to talk to the lawyers and investigators who were just beginning to sort out this nightmare. "Are you convinced you don't want to come tomorrow?" he asked his wife.

"I don't think it's a great idea," Hilaria said.