‘Rust’ Cast and Crew React to Halyna Hutchins’ Death in Real Time in New Documentary Trailer
In the official trailer for Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna, a series of events transforms the set of Joel Souza’s Rust into an active crime scene. “It sounded like an explosion,” one crew member recalled of the moment cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was struck by a live bullet fired from Alec Baldwin’s prop gun in 2021. “She looked up at me and said, ‘I can’t feel my legs,'” another said.
Out March 11 on Hulu, Last Take recounts the fatal shooting of Hutchins with exclusive insights into the inner tragedy that occurred before the event transformed into a media frenzy. “She died doing the work that she loved doing,” director Rachel Mason shared in a statement to Rolling Stone. “A fact overlooked by the media because she was never the center of the story.”
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In the trailer, Baldwin recoils in shock after being told that Hutchins did not survive the shooting. The 911 call featured in the beginning of the clip informs the operator that two people were shot, Hutchins and Souza, who was struck after the bullet passed through the cinematographer and into his shoulder. The preview also features Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer on the film who crew members said had little experience. “No accident just happens out of the blue,” another key individual said. “Every accident is preceded by a series of failures.”
Mason created the documentary at the request of Hutchins’ husband. “Only through the making of the film did I grasp that his request must have come from a protective instinct because the way she died meant that her story would be in the hands of people who couldn’t be trusted,” she said. “So often her name felt like a footnote in a headline, an unthinkable diminishment of the person who to us was so much more than a victim.”
Last Take includes materials from Hutchins’ personal archives and the surrounding investigations into her death. “I made it my sole purpose to try to protect every possible piece of archival that I could find so that we could build the film out of her own films, and share pieces of her childhood and experiences as an immigrant from Ukraine,” Mason added. “My central task became how to make a film about Halyna, which didn’t allow her death to overshadow her life. I had to be vigilant and protective. And so the goal became how to make a story about RUST, a story about Halyna. It became obvious when I realized that her death was intrinsically connected to this final film.”
Last summer, Baldwin was tried for involuntary manslaughter in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but Judge Mary Marlowe Somme ultimately dismissed the case on grounds that the state withheld evidence from the defense. In September 2024, Gutierrez-Reed, now serving an 18-month sentence for the incident, lost her bid for a new trial and release from prison. Ahead of the film’s November 2024 premiere, Hutchins’ mother, Olga Solovey, criticized Baldwin for refusing to apologize for the accidental shooting death of her daughter and accused him of seeking to “unjustly profit” from the tragedy.
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