Four years after the fatal shooting on the set of “Rust,” the man who supplied prop guns and blanks to the production has sued Alec Baldwin in a bid to clear his name.
Seth Kenney, the owner of PDQ Arm & Prop, filed the 35-page complaint last week, alleging that his reputation has been destroyed in the wake of the accidental death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
In an interview with Variety, Kenney said he has been unable to find work in the film industry since then.
“It’s been devastating,” he said. “It’s not a matter of saving face. There’s nothing left to lose. This whole thing has been shit and I have been the scapegoat.”
Kenney supplied the Colt .45 revolver that Baldwin was holding when the fatal shot was fired on Oct. 21, 2021. The film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, served 14 months for involuntary manslaughter for loading a live bullet into the gun. Baldwin was put on trial last summer, but the case was thrown out midway through due to withheld evidence.
Investigators never determined how the armorer’s supply of dummy rounds became contaminated with live bullets — a major safety breach. Kenney, who served as a key prosecution witness at both trials, has adamantly denied that he was to blame, saying he had meticulously “rattle tested” each dummy to ensure that it was inert.
But he has been unable to escape a cloud of suspicion. In his lawsuit, Kenney accuses Baldwin and others of conspiring with “cutthroat industry Hollywood ‘fixers’ and media” to put the blame on him. As a result of a “national propaganda campaign,” Kenney says he has suffered personal humiliation, mental anguish, and “ruinous financial losses.”
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In the interview, Kenney said the “last straw” came in January, when Baldwin filed a malicious prosecution lawsuit against New Mexico officials. In the complaint, Baldwin’s lawyers suggested that Kenney had inadvertently commingled live rounds into a supply of dummy rounds. Baldwin’s lawyers also argued that detectives had failed to properly investigate Kenney because they were working closely with him.
“Why is he trying to paint me out to be this villain?” Kenney asked.
Kenney has been repeatedly sued for his alleged role in the shooting. He filed his lawsuit himself, without a lawyer. He said he was no longer worried about inflicting further harm to his career by speaking out.
“I’ve gotta say my piece,” he said. “I do have that opportunity to say, ‘Here’s what really went on with a lot of things.’”
The lawsuit names Baldwin as a defendant along with the production entity, Gutierrez Reed, and numerous other producers and crew members. It tells a familiar tale of a cascade of safety lapses. It accuses the production of cutting corners and faults Baldwin for failing to participate in an inspection of the gun. And it alleges that Gutierrez Reed was the one responsible for the live bullets.
“Hannah started this deadly snowball,” Kenney said. “Then the rest of them do everything they’re not supposed to do.”
Prosecutors at Gutierrez Reed’s trial showed evidence that she had brought the contaminated dummies from a previous production, “The Old Way,” starring Nicolas Cage. In his lawsuit, Kenney alleges “upon information and belief” that her dummy supply “had been mixed with live .45 Colt rounds that she had been shooting in her off hours while working as an Armorer on ‘The Old Way.’”
Gutierrez Reed was paroled in May and is still appealing her conviction. In a police interview in 2021, she said she got the dummy rounds she used on “The Old Way” from Kenney. She sued Kenney in 2022, blaming him for introducing the live bullets. Her suit was later dropped.
In his initial police interview, Kenney was shown a photo of a box of dummies marked with the initials “JS” that was recovered from the set of “Rust.” He acknowledged that he may have supplied the box to Gutierrez Reed for “The Old Way.”
“I might have provided this previously on the Nic Cage movie,” he said. “It’s entirely possible. I don’t remember.”
At the time, he also said that the source of the live bullets was not important.
“In the end again it doesn’t matter, because we have to assume everything is live,” he said. “She still didn’t do her job.”
Two years later, Kenney testified that he did remember who provided the “JS” box to “The Old Way.” He said they came from Gutierrez Reed’s father, film armorer Thell Reed.
“I was definitely honest in the interview, and initially I couldn’t remember,” he told Variety via text this week. “It took me a while to realize that I had never owned a ‘JS’ .45 Colt Dummy round box.”
Baldwin’s lawyers declined to comment on Kenney’s suit.
Kenney said he hopes to use the discovery process to learn more about Baldwin’s use of media fixers to damage his reputation. The suit accuses the defendants of working with online trolls and YouTube creators to paint him in a false light.
“People that know me understand what a stickler I am,” Kenney said.
He said the industry immediately cut ties with him after the shooting, and that the effect on his career may be “terminal.”
“What are you going to do — pull over by the side of the road and cry in the gutter?” he said. “No. I refuse to give up. It’s not that I’m done with the industry. The industry might be done with me for a while.”
Baldwin’s attorneys, meanwhile, recently revived his lawsuit after it was thrown out for lack of prosecution. The suit alleges that the state deliberately withheld a cache of bullets — three of which appeared to match the fatal round — because it undermined the state’s theory of the case.
After removing the case to federal court, the state filed five motions Tuesday and Wednesday to dismiss it on grounds of prosecutorial immunity.
A few other civil suits remain pending. Hutchins’ mother and sister have filed a suit against Baldwin and others involved in the production. Baldwin is due to be deposed in that case via Zoom on Nov. 12.
Kenney also filed a six-page civil rights lawsuit against the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office last December, alleging that investigators lied in order to obtain a search warrant on his business.
In the new lawsuit, Kenney states that he still has not received his gun back — it remains in evidence — and that the “Rust” production never paid him for the rental.
From Variety US