The husband of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins has shared the heartbreaking moment when he had to tell their 9-year-old son that his mother had been killed.
In October 2021, while on the set of his new movie Rust, actor Alec Baldwin was handed a gun by the assistant director and held it up at the camera.
The actor, 63, fired a revolver containing a live round. The shot accidentally killed 42-year-old cinematographer Hutchins and injured 48-year-old director Joel Souza.
Listen to Matt Hutchins' interview right here:
According to a search warrant affidavit, the assistant director shouted "cold gun" before handing Baldwin the gun and was unaware that the weapon was loaded with live rounds.
Since the tragedy, Baldwin maintained that he did not know it was loaded and that he did not pull the trigger.
Now, the late cinematographer's husband Matt Hutchins opened up about the tragedy on Thursday's Today show about how he approached telling their son, Andros, after learning the news that his wife of 16 years had been shot and killed.
"A member of the production team told me that Halyna had been shot, my heart sank right away," he said.
He went on: "It was completely inexplicable to me that it could’ve happened at that moment, and the first thing I thought, I sat down and I said, 'I have to get my son,' because I had to be with him.
"And so I rushed home, and on the way decided that we had to go to Santa Fe. When I got through to the doctor and spoke with him, and he detailed exactly what had happened and that she didn’t survive, I was heartbroken. And I knew that I had to tell my son right away when I saw him."
Hutchins decided to be straight with their son about what happened.
"I just had to be very direct and blunt because going to pick him up and go to the airport to go to Santa Fe, I didn’t want him to think that we were going to be seeing her and having fun together, and getting his hopes up," Hutchins said.
"I told him, sitting together, that his mother had been shot and died. And, of course, he didn’t believe it right away. He didn’t want to believe it.
"I think that that kind of news you just have to say multiple times so that it can be believed. And so he believed it, and we cried together then. I believe that she is still with us in our hearts."