Alec Baldwin Has Opinions on Workplace Safety

After a video of former NFL player Brendan Langley was posted on social media, showing the athlete punching an airport employee in the face, commenters began to express whether or not the altercation was justified.

One commenter caught everyone’s attention: actor Alec Baldwin.

According to celebrity gossip Instagram account @theshaderoom, on a post of the video, Baldwin commented, “The guy working at the airport is the victim. He came to work to do a job. The other guy, with his big mouth, is guilty of work place abuse, where people come to work with an expectation of safety, even civility. This asshole who hit this guy should be put on a no fly list.”

Baldwin’s comments elicited a “dude, really?” response, as the actor is at the center of the case of the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was killed on set for the movie Rust last year when a prop gun Baldwin was holding misfired. The set where the fatal accident took place had been faced with many workplace safety concerns, even beore the shooting, with some workers walking off the set the day the accident occurred. In a piece for Vanity Fair investigating the accident and the set, eyewitnesses say that the young and inexperienced head armorer could have mistakenly placed a live bullet into the prop gun, due to lack of manpower to properly monitor the situation.

One person who worked with the armorer on a previous movie told Vanity Fair that lack of experience, and also cost cutting, is creating safety issues throughout the film industry. “You have a 20-something who’s being hounded by the A.D. to hurry, to rush, to go, go, go, go, go, go, go. ‘We need the shot! The actor’s on set!’ You’re trying to do a million different things.” There is still a civil suit pending against Baldwin, and others, from the Hutchins family, as well as a criminal investigation into what happened.

Baldwin has denied that he bears fault for the accident, saying in an interview with ABC that he did not pull the trigger of the gun, and that he was “willing to do anything [he] can to cooperate” with the investigation.

Maybe he should add to that list: Don’t comment on workplace safety elsewhere while these investigations are ongoing.