Actor says shooting on the set of 30 Rock broke his back, but he’s confident one day people ‘will want to get armed in a city the size of New York’
Alec Baldwin: ‘I would never point a gun at anyone and then pull the trigger, never’
Alec Baldwin says he has never pulled the trigger of a gun on the set of his TV show 30 Rock, and claims he could never be tempted to.
The actor said that on 30 Rock – one of the most successful comedy series of all time – he had been shot on the set in an accident.
The actor says the bullet had been accidentally fired by a prop shooter because he had asked him to check the scene. He said: “I must have put my foot on the trigger and the gun went off. I got shot in the back, it was really bad.”
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Baldwin said he broke his back and it took months to recover. “I was in a coma for two days, and then they took me off all my machines and they wouldn’t let me see anyone else for a week.”
He added that his mother was worried he wouldn’t recover. “I can’t trust a gun with myself,” he said. “Now I wish I had a gun.”
The actor said he thinks that 30 Rock would be considered a dangerous show if it was released today. “I know we had a lot of police concerns [then] about the gunshot, but what I learned on 30 Rock – which I feel is the experience that actors live with, and I will attest to it – is that you can never be too careful.”
He added: “If it came to the fact that they said, Alec, you know we’re no longer going to renew your contract or give you any money, because we found out you were carrying a gun when you got shot on the air, I would never point a gun at anyone and then pull the trigger, never. I don’t understand why I should have to be worried about this.
“If I had my choice I would tell the Republican rightwingers, and especially people that are so protective of guns: grow up. This show was back then, that’s a fictional show. You can’t be going to an NYPD fan convention every weekend and saying, ‘Maybe one day we should have law and order, maybe that’s something we should accept.’ This is my life, I’m 48 years old. I don’t want to be a hero. I just want to be useful.
Baldwin appeared on today’s edition of the Today show to promote his latest movie, the Facebook Watch series Series of Unfortunate Events.