Four years after the fatal shooting on the set of “The Last,” the man who supplied the film with prop guns and blanks has sued Alec Baldwin to clear his name.
Seth Kenney, owner of PDQ Arm & Prop, filed a 35-page complaint last week claiming his reputation was tarnished following the accidental death of cinematographer Halina Hutchins.
Kenny said in an interview with Variety that he has not been able to find work in the film industry since then.
“It was devastating,” he said. “It’s not a matter of saving face. I have nothing to lose. This whole thing was shit, and I became the scapegoat.”
Kenney provided the Colt .45 revolver that Baldwin was carrying when the fatal shooting took place on October 21, 2021. Movie armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed served 14 months in prison for manslaughter for loading a gun with live ammunition. Baldwin went to trial last summer, but the case was stopped prematurely because evidence was suppressed.
Investigators have not revealed how the dummy rounds supplied by the armorer became contaminated with live ammunition. This is a serious safety violation. Mr Kenney, who was the key prosecution witness in both trials, adamantly denied his responsibility and said he meticulously conducted “rattle tests” on each dummy to ensure it was inert.
However, he could not escape the cloud of suspicion. In his lawsuit, Mr. Kenney accuses Mr. Baldwin and others of colluding with “a cutthroat industry Hollywood ‘fixers’ and media” to shift the blame onto him. Kenney said she suffered personal humiliation, emotional distress and “catastrophic financial losses” as a result of the “national propaganda campaign.”
In an interview, Kenney said the “last straw” came in January when Baldwin filed a malicious prosecution suit against New Mexico officials. Baldwin’s attorney suggested in the complaint that Kenney may have accidentally mixed live ammunition into the dummy rounds. Baldwin’s lawyers also argued that detectives failed to properly investigate the case because they worked closely with Kenney.
“Why is he trying to make me the bad guy?” Kenny asked.
Kenney has been repeatedly accused of being involved in shootings. He filed the lawsuit himself without going through a lawyer. He said he was no longer concerned that speaking out would further harm his career.
“You have to speak your mind,” he said. “There’s an opportunity to say, ‘Here’s what actually happened a lot.'”
Baldwin is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, along with production company Gutierrez Reed and numerous other producers and staff. It tells a familiar story of cascading safety failures. The paper accuses the manufacturer of cutting corners and blames Baldwin for not participating in testing the gun. They allege that Gutierrez-Reed was the one who fired the live bullet.
“Hannah started this scary snowman,” Kenny said. “Then the rest of us do all the things we’re not supposed to do.”
Prosecutors in Gutierrez-Reed’s trial presented evidence that she brought in a tainted dummy from her previous film, “The Old Way,” starring Nicolas Cage. Kenney alleges in the lawsuit that, “on information and belief,” her dummy supplies were “laced with live .45 Colt ammunition that she had been shooting during her off hours while working as an armorer at ‘The Old Way.'”
Gutierrez-Reed was released on parole in May and is currently appealing his conviction. In a 2021 police interview, she said she received the dummy bullets from Kenney that she used in “The Old Way.” She accused Kenney of introducing live ammunition and filed a lawsuit in 2022. Her suit was later withdrawn.
During his initial police interrogation, Kenny was shown a photo of a dummy box marked with the initials “JS” that had been recovered from the set of “The Last.” He admitted that he may have provided a box of “The Old Way” to Gutierrez-Reed.
“We may have offered this before in a Nic Cage movie,” he said. “That’s quite possible. I don’t remember.”
He also said the source of the live ammunition was not important.
“At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter, because you have to assume everything is live,” he said. “She hasn’t done her job yet.”
Two years later, Kenney testified that he remembered who provided the “JS” box to “The Old Way.” He said they came from Gutierrez-Reed’s father, Cel Reed, a movie armorer.
“I was definitely honest in the interview, but I couldn’t remember it at first,” he told Variety via text this week. “It took me a while to realize that I had never owned a ‘JS’ .45 Colt Dummy Round Box.”
Baldwin’s attorney declined to comment on Kenney’s lawsuit.
Kenney said he wants to use the discovery process to learn more about Baldwin’s use of media fixers to damage his reputation. The lawsuit accuses the defendants of collaborating with online trolls and YouTube creators to paint him in a false light.
“People who know me know how picky I am,” Kenney said.
He said the industry would immediately cut ties with him after the shooting and that the impact on his career could be “terminal.”
“What are you going to do — park on the side of the road and cry in the gutter?” he said. “No, I’m not giving up. I’m not done with this industry. For a while, this industry may be done with me.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Baldwin’s lawyers recently revived his case, which was dismissed on a no-contest basis. The lawsuit alleges the state intentionally withheld a cache of bullets, three of which appeared to be consistent with the fatal bullet, to undermine the state’s theory of the case.
After moving the case to federal court, the state filed five motions Tuesday and Wednesday seeking to dismiss the case citing prosecutorial immunity.
Several other civil lawsuits are pending. Hutchins’ mother and sister filed a lawsuit against Baldwin and others involved in the production. In this case, Baldwin is scheduled to be fired via Zoom on November 12th.
Kenney also filed a six-page civil rights lawsuit against the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office in December, accusing investigators of lying to obtain a search warrant for his business.
In the new lawsuit, Kenney says he still hasn’t had his gun returned, which is in evidence, and that the “Lust” production company hasn’t paid him any rental fees.
