‘The Trial of Alec Baldwin’ Trailer Gives Behind-the-Scenes Look at Actor During ‘Rust’ Trial

“When they told me she died, I was in shock,” Alec Baldwin says in the new trailer for the upcoming documentary, The Trial of Alec Baldwin. The film covers the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, whom Baldwin was accused of shooting accidentally in 2021 when a live bullet somehow wound up in what was supposed to be a prop gun during the making of the movie, Rust. Baldwin contended he never pulled the trigger. The clip shows the immediate aftermath of the shooting, as Baldwin and others brace for oncoming paparazzi. The film opens in select theaters in October before wide screenings begin Oct. 16.

The trailer also looks at Baldwin’s tetchy relationship with the tabloid press, looking back at past scuffles he had with paparazzi and the intense scrutiny on him following the shooting. “I want to be acquitted so I can just walk out the door and everyone just leave me alone,” he says in the trailer.

It also alleges that local authorities were looking to leverage an indictment of Baldwin for political gain. With what seems like unprecedented access to the actor, one scene supposedly shows the moment Baldwin found out he’d been indicted in a phone call. And in another scene, he posits, “They’d definitely put me in jail if they could.”

“If you said to me, ‘Hike up Mt. Everest, and she’ll come back,’ I’d be packed and ready to go,” Baldwin says in the clip. “Whatever I could do … but there’s nothing I could do.”

Filmmaker Rory Kennedy, who received an Oscar nomination in 2015 for the documentary Last Days in Vietnam, directed the picture. The preview shows the film touching on the trial of the Rust set’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, as well as the peculiarities of Baldwin’s trial, such as prosecutor Kari Morrissey taking the stand at her own trial. “How the hell did I end up in this vortex?” Baldwin asks in the trailer. Baldwin’s manslaughter case was ultimately dismissed.