A weapons supplier who worked on Rust has filed a sweeping lawsuit against Alec Baldwin and the film’s producers and crew, accusing them of waging a “scapegoat smear campaign” that destroyed his livelihood after the fatal 2021 shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
In a 35-page complaint filed this week in a New Mexico court, Seth Kenney and his company, PDQ Arm and Prop, claim that Baldwin and the film’s production team “intentionally defamed” him by suggesting his firm supplied live ammunition that caused Hutchins’s death.
The suit seeks unspecified damages for reputational and financial harm. “Defendants, individually and collectively, in an effort to distance themselves from the Rust criminal investigation and onslaught of negative publicity, conspired to paint plaintiffs in a nationwide false light scapegoat smear campaign,” the lawsuit reads.
Baldwin, who is Rust’s lead actor and co-producer, was pointing a gun at Hutchins during a rehearsal on set in October 2021 when it went off, killing the cinematographer and wounding director Joel Souza.
They were filming at the Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe at the time.
The suit alleges that the producers “spread falsehoods” to law enforcement and the media, asserting that Kenney had delivered live rounds disguised as dummy bullets.
His company only supplied inert ammunition and blanks, it adds, insisting that “no live rounds were ever provided to the Rust production”.
Kenney alleges that Baldwin, armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, and more than 30 others, including producers and senior crew, conspired “with cutthroat Hollywood fixers and media” to deflect blame for the presence of live ammunition on set.
He says the defendants spread falsehoods through a “national propaganda campaign”, leaving him financially ruined and unable to find work.
“It’s been devastating,” Kenney told Variety. “It’s not a matter of saving face. There’s nothing left to lose. This whole thing has been shit and I have been the scapegoat.”
In his lawsuit, Kenney accuses the production of breaching safety rules, failing to pay rental fees for his equipment, and allowing his gun to be used improperly. He also claims that Baldwin failed to participate in a required inspection of the gun before the incident.
Baldwin has denied wrongdoing, maintaining that he believed the weapon contained only dummy rounds. He has said he pulled back the hammer, but not the trigger, and the revolver fired.
A criminal case against Baldwin over the shooting was dismissed in July 2024 after prosecutors admitted that evidence concerning the gun had been withheld and that the weapon could have been modified before testing. He had been charged with involuntary manslaughter following the shooting.
The Independent has reached out to Baldwin’s representatives for comment.
Gutierrez-Reed, who loaded the weapon, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in March 2024 and sentenced to 18 months in prison. She was paroled in May 2025 and is appealing her conviction.
Investigators never determined how live rounds became mixed with blanks supplied for the production.
Prosecutors claimed during her trial in 2024 that Gutierrez-Reed had brought contaminated dummy rounds from a previous film, The Old Way, starring Nicolas Cage.
Kenney’s suit repeats that allegation, stating that her dummy rounds “had been mixed with live .45 Colt rounds that she had been shooting in her off hours while working as an armourer on The Old Way”.
Gutierrez-Reed filed her own lawsuit in 2022 accusing Kenney of introducing the live rounds, but it was later dropped.
Kenney says he rigorously “rattle-tested” each dummy round to ensure it was inert and that investigators never proved live ammunition came from his stock.
“People that know me understand what a stickler I am,” he said.
Dummy rounds typically contain a metal ball bearing inside and rattle when shaken. A live bullet does not rattle when it's shaken.
Live rounds are never supposed to be on a film set, for any reason. In earlier testimony, Souza said he refused to believe he had been shot because the idea that a live round was on set was alien to him. Cherlyn Schaefer, the paramedic who worked on the set and testified in Ms Gutierrez-Reed's trial, said she was not equipped with extensive tools for treating gunshot wounds because a live round was never meant to be on a set.
In 2022, Kenney told investigators that he did not remember whether he had supplied the box of blanks found on the Rust set, saying it was “entirely possible” he could have supplied it to Gutierrez-Reed for use on The Old Way.
However, he insisted that it was still Gutierrez-Reed’s responsibility to assume that all rounds were live unless personally verified otherwise.
Kenney told Variety the rounds didn’t come from him but likely from Gutierrez-Reed’s father, veteran film armourer Thell Reed.
Kenney says the “last straw” prompting his suit came in January 2025, when Baldwin filed a malicious prosecution claim against New Mexico officials.
In that case, Baldwin’s lawyers suggested that Kenney might have inadvertently mixed live rounds into a batch of dummy ammunition, which Kenney said reignited suspicions against him.
Kenney also alleges that Baldwin and others employed “media fixers, online trolls and YouTube commentators” to portray him as responsible for the shooting.
His weapon is still held as evidence by authorities and he claims the fallout has been “terminal” for his career. “I refuse to give up. It’s not that I’m done with the industry. The industry might be done with me for a while,” he said.
Kenney testified in March 2024 that he provided a box of 50 dummy rounds that he had personally cleaned and repackaged for Rust, adding that they had previously been used in another production in Texas.
When asked if he ever gave any live ammunition to propmaster Sarah Zachry, he said he hadn’t.
Rust premiered at the Camerimage festival in Toruń, Poland, on 20 November 2024 and entered US theatres with a limited release on 2 May 2025.
The Independent’s Adam White gave the film two stars and described it as “a miserable experience overall”.
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