Director Joel Souza Gives 1st Interview About Fatal ‘Rust’ Shooting

Director Joel Souza is speaking out in his first interview after the fatal shooting on the set of Rust .

“I remember specifically going to sleep that night and hoping I didn’t wake up the next morning,” Souza, 51, told Vanity Fair in an interview published on Thursday, August 15. “I hoped I would just bleed out overnight because I didn’t want to be around anymore. It was a very difficult moment. I remember just thinking, Maybe I’ll just sort of bleed to death — that would suit me just fine.”

In October 2021, Rust star Alec Baldwin was holding a gun that misfired, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins at age 42. Souza was injured in the incident as well with the bullet just missing his lung.

“It’s bizarre to have been shot,” he recalled in the same Vanity Fair profile. “And then, who was holding the gun? That’s bizarre. I had this weird thought, like, God, I remember watching The Hunt for Red October in the movie theater when I was a kid. It’s like your older self whispers to your younger self, ‘Hey, that guy … someday.’ … Life can take you down some very bizarre roads.”

Following the shooting, Souza made the decision to stay silent — especially when it came to the criminal cases surrounding Baldwin, 66, and armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed .

Alec Baldwin Fatally Shoots Cinematographer on ‘Rust’ Set After Prop Gun Misfire: Everything to Know

Gutierrez-Reed, 27, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in March and the following month sentenced to 18 months in prison . Baldwin, meanwhile, was initially charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter in January 2023. He pleaded not guilty in February of that year and the charges were dropped by April. However, he was indicted a second time this past January. A New Mexico judge threw out the case on July 12. ( Us Weekly can confirm that Gutierrez-Reed has since filed a motion for new trial or dismissal in the wake of Baldwin’s trial.)

“There’s a lot of people who know a lot of very specific things about all of it, but in a weird way, I feel like I’m the person who knows the most about all of it,” Souza, who was set to testify in Baldwin’s trial, told Vanity Fair . (The article revealed that the film has since been completed with Souza as the director, but release details have been left up in the air.)

During the same interview, Souza admitted that Rust was “very hard to make” even before the highly publicized shooting complicated things even more. The series of events on the incident “get a little fuzzy” for the filmmaker.

“I kept wanting to try to look over her right shoulder, to see that little monitor down below,” he said. “To see what the angle looked like. But I couldn’t see over her. I got in behind her. When I tried to get a look, that’s when the gun fired. And then … yeah, all hell broke loose.”

Souza continued: “It felt like a horse kicked me in the shoulder or someone hit me with a bat. The whole right side of my body went numb, completely numb, but it also hurt excruciatingly at the same time, if that makes sense.”

He remembered “yelling,” but looking back, has no idea why.

Alec Baldwin Is Going to Trial for Involuntary Manslaughter 3 Years After ‘Rust’ Shooting: What to Know

“My initial thought was that I was very angry,” he added. “I was furious at that moment. I remember looking up and they were lowering Halyna to sit in front of me, and there was blood coming through her white shirt.”

Reflecting on the entire incident as a whole, Souza said it “ruined” him.

“I don’t mean in the sense that people might generally think. I don’t mean that it put my career in ruins. I mean, internally, the person I was just went away. That stopped,” he explained. “It’s not like I was in love with the guy I was before, anyway. You look in the mirror the day after that happens, and now there’s somebody else there. I didn’t know things about the world one day, and now I do. And none of them are good."

As for him and Baldwin now? “There’s no relationship” between them.

“Getting through it was tough. We got through it,” Souza said. “I got the performance I wanted. We’re not friends. We’re not enemies.”