Alec Baldwin “Really, Really Didn’t Like” Documentary About Him, Filmmakers Say

“The worst thing for me is to be misunderstood,” Alec Baldwin states minutes into The Trial of Alec Baldwin, the documentary about the aftermath of the death of Halyna Hutchins, who was shot and killed on the set of Rust on Oct. 21, 2021, when a prop gun held by the actor discharged live bullets into the cinematographer as well as director Joel Souza.

It’s a somewhat unsurprising confession from Baldwin, whose seemingly combative public persona has garnered as many headlines as his TV and film roles. But it’s one that reverberates throughout the film, calling into question how Baldwin’s desire to change the public’s negative perception of him — which the film argues is what ultimately put him on trial — shapes the insights he discloses on camera.

“[That question is] one that we grappled with in the film,” director Rory Kennedy said in a Q&A following a screening of The Trial of Alex Baldwin during the SCAD Savannah Film Festival on Oct. 27. “I think part of our experience was that Alec wasn’t always the most reliable narrator of himself. … So part of what we’re trying to do, because we have these questions as filmmakers — when is he acting, what is real, what is not — we want to bring the audience into those questions as well so that it’s not like we’re presenting this as here’s all the facts.

“Our feeling at the end of the day,” Kennedy continued, “is you can feel what you might about Alec — and people have, often, strong feelings one way or the other — and you may still have those feelings at the end of the film that you had going into it, but I think most people, in watching the film, will feel like there was an injustice.”

Kennedy and her husband and producing partner, Mark Bailey, began following Baldwin in March 2023, just as filming on the set of Rust was set to go back into production after Hutchins’ death, and a mere weeks before the initial charge of involuntary manslaughter brought against him was dropped. In January 2024, a grand jury re-indicted Baldwin on the same charge as the cameras continued following him.

The documentary is both biographical and culturally expository in nature, detailing Baldwin’s decades-long career onscreen and the democratic Irish Catholic upbringing that fostered the aggression often witnessed in his notable run-ins with the press. Throughout, Baldwin expresses a love-hate relationship with his profession and the microscope under which it has placed his personal life, in one scene shedding tears over his young ambitions as an actor and in another saying he’s embarrassed by his thespian pursuit.

“I find him incredibly sincere in that he believes what he’s saying when he’s saying it; he’s not trying to consciously con you,” Bailey said at SCAD. “He’s not on script when he’s saying, ‘Movies didn’t mean anything to me. I just did it for the money.’ He actually, in that moment at the kitchen table, believes that, and [his wife] Hilaria is calling him out like, ‘But honey, you don’t really think that when you go and work with students … .’

“The other piece that complicates that even further for a guy like that who doesn’t really have a filter is that he was under enormous stress and strain,” Bailey continued, referencing footage of Baldwin expressing sorrow for Hutchins’ son and reflecting on how his own children would feel if something happened to their mother. “He’s so raw because you’re catching somebody in a real moment of crisis, which was sort of, I think, courageous of him to let us in his life at that time and to let Rory be so close there. It’s kind of a remarkable thing to see somebody, in my mind, that unguarded because even if he wanted to guard himself, he is not in that place of stability to do that.”

The film ends with Baldwin ultimately being acquitted during trial proceedings yet aware that his standing in the court of public opinion will continue to require additional reframing, the work for which he says he’s willing to do. As for his own thoughts on the finished film, which premiered at Doc NYC last November and was released worldwide on Oct. 1, 2026, by Abramorama: “He really, really, really didn’t like it,” Kennedy admitted.

“It’s traumatic for him. And I think as his lawyer says at the end, he has to live with this. And despite all of his limitations, he’s a deeply caring, emotional, sensitive human, and he carries this with him,” she continued. “He had five jobs in Hollywood, all of his producing friends called him up and fired him, and he has seven kids, and then he was just annihilated in the press and in social media and people said really mean, horrible things about him and he reads them — which I would advise him not to do — but in any case, I think it’s traumatic to watch this.”

Speaking to Baldwin’s specific feedback, Kennedy added, “He didn’t particularly like our take in sort of focusing on things like the voicemail [in which he called his daughter, Ireland, a pig in 2007] and where he sort of misbehaved historically or wasn’t at his best, so I think it was complicated for him. But, over time, and now that it’s gone on the festival circuit and people have seen the film, and people who he respects have seen the film and feel like it really helps do this story justice and helps people really understand what he went through. … I think for him, and for so many people around him who care about him, they’re like, ‘This really helps you understand what happened.’ ”