“Dukes of Hazzard” alum John Schneider weighed in on the recent ABC News tell-all interview fellow actor Alec Baldwin did, where he spoke about the fatal shooting on the “Rust” movie set, an interview that Schneider characterized as “nonsense.”
Baldwin told ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos that he “didn’t pull the trigger” on the gun he was holding when it fired during a scene rehearsal on the New Mexico set — the gun had live ammunition in it, according to various reports, and cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally struck by the bullet fired. An investigation into the shooting remains underway.
Schneider was clear right out of the gate that the fact that Baldwin choose ABC to give his first in-depth interview since Hutchins was killed wasn’t necessarily by accident, saying the intent of the production was “to make us feel sorry for Alec Baldwin.”
“First of all George Stephanopoulos is the poster boy for leftist propaganda,” he said. “So why in the world anyone would look at an interview with George as being anything enlightening or having a modicum of truth I don’t know… this journalist has walked the party line since he showed up at the party’s front door.”
Recounting Stephanopoulos’s description of the interview, Schneider went into full actor mode to very effectively feign distraught similar to what was seen from Baldwin, saying, “It was teary-eyed. I mean, it affected him so much.”
“It’s bullshit, okay,” he then said, coming out of character.
Commenting on the claim that Baldwin didn’t pull the trigger, Schneider read from a Variety article that stated as the actor “practiced drawing and firing the weapon, a bullet discharged, injuring director Joel Souza and killing Hutchins.”
“So what is it George, are we to believe that a gun went off by itself?” he asked. “Are we to believe that someone didn’t pull a trigger? Are we to believe that somehow, magically, on the first part of your teary-eyed, nonsensical ‘journalism,’ that we believe that Alec didn’t pull the trigger?”
Suggesting that working in Hollywood can be a “wonderful business,” Schneider expressed his dismay when “someone takes a crap, which obviously George and Alec have done here.”
“Three weeks ago, it was a prop gun. Four weeks ago, nobody knew how in the world this real weapon was loaded on the set,” Schneider said. “Today, he didn’t pull the trigger. What kind of idiots do you take us for?”
He beseeched law enforcement to continue investigating the incident.
“Guns do not go off by themselves,” Schneider insisted. “Let us not forget this was a single-action – it was not a Colt, it was a replica … a single-action weapon needs to be cocked and fired. So what kind of idiots do you take us for?”
“There is just no world in which guns go off by themselves,” he repeated, after proposing a far-fetched scenario that was unlikely to have occurred.
“So he never pulled the trigger. That’s what we’re hearing now and Hutchins is still deceased,” Schneider continued. “And their family is not getting an apology, they’re not getting any – in my opinion – they’re not getting any justice, they’re not getting any answers.”
The actor then offered his analogy of what the interview claim boils down to, comparing a bully pushing a child off of a swing on a playground to the shooting.
“What is the bully going to say? ‘I didn’t push her! I didn’t push her,'” the actor said. “First they’re going to say, ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know what was going on.’ Then if that doesn’t work – which, by the way, it still doesn’t work because you are supposed to check the weapon, you fellow – but then you have the audacity to say, ‘I didn’t pull the trigger.'”
He further insisted that it was “still inexcusable” that Baldwin did not check the weapon.
Actor George Clooney said recently: “Every single time I’m handed a gun on a set — every time they hand me a gun — I look at it, I open it, I show it to the person I’m pointing it to. We show it to the crew.”
Baldwin dismissed Clooney’s assessment as “misplaced.”
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
Tom Tillison grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills. Tillison also contributes to BizPac Review.
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