Alec Baldwin was told he'd been handed a "cold gun" before the accident that killed Halyna Hutchins.
The cinematographer was accidentally shot dead on the set of the movie “Rust” in October 2021, and Baldwin has once again insisted that he didn't pull the trigger on the gun that killed Hutchins.
Asked how a gun could fire without the trigger being pulled, Baldwin said: "You're familiar with what fanning a gun is? Have you heard of that phrase, fanning the gun?
“So, if you pull the hammer back, and you don’t lock the hammer; if you pull the hammer back pretty far – in old Western movies you’d see someone fan the hammer of the gun – the hammer didn’t lock; you pulled it back to an extent where it would fire the bullet without you pulling the trigger, without you locking the hammer."
Baldwin also insisted that the safety director reassured him that "the gun was safe" when it was handed to him.
The Hollywood star told “The Chris Cuomo Project” podcast: "The man who's the principal safety officer on the set of the film declared that the gun was safe when he handed it to me.
"The person who was the principal safety officer of the film declared in front of the entire assemblage, ‘This is a cold gun.' Now, why did he say that if he didn’t know and he hadn’t checked?
"The point is, all of us were told that everything was cool and you could relax and we’re working with a gun that’s safe to rehearse with. He explained it to me, effectively, exactly what can happen if you pull the hammer back and let it go if there’s a live round."
Meanwhile, an FBI investigation recently determined that the trigger was pulled on the gun.
The investigators tested the gun to see if they could fire the weapon without using the trigger, but they insisted it wasn't possible.