Too far. Alec Baldwin clapped back at Instagram users who claimed his caption to a photo showing his wife and son was “sexually suggestive.”
Baldwin, 64, showed wife Hilaria Baldwin, 39, getting a back rub from the couple’s 6-year-old son Leonardo, on Sunday, January 22, and wrote, “The old ‘let me give you a back rub’ ploy.”
“Sexualizing children is always so weird but your own child? Yikes,” one user wrote in the comments, while another called Baldwin’s caption, “disgusting.” One person shared, “That’s a pretty f—king weird comment to make on a photo of your son and his mother.”
Baldwin fired back in the comments section that “The U.S. is a country fueled by hate,” while responding to a fan who pointed out that Leo, “could have easily been buttering up mom to stay up later or for an extra snack.” She also told the actor, “People whose minds go anywhere else are the real problem.”
The 30 Rock alum later made a change to his original caption, editing it to read, “Potato chips to follow,” after his original back rub post. Baldwin added in the comments, “I adjusted the text. I guess because … you know … there is so much of that Reddit trash out there.”
It was the actor’s first Instagram post since it was announced he will be charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the New Mexico set of their film, Rust, in 2021.
Baldwin and the movie’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who faces the same charges, violated “all of the standards that we all have to follow if we have a gun in our hands,” Santa Fe district attorney, Mary Carmack-Altwies, said on January 19, 2023, when announcing the decision.
“It was people acting recklessly, people not doing their jobs, people not following safety protocols, not following safety standards,” Carmack-Altwies said of the incident where Baldwin allegedly fired a prop gun during a scene set-up that had a live round in it, while he has steadfastly maintained that he did not pull the gun’s trigger.
“Because of that, I would say this is not just an accident, this is a criminal accident. Prison is not necessarily the goal. What I want is justice for Halyna Hutchins, and I want people to take responsibility and take accountability for what their actions or inactions led to, and that’s Halyna Hutchins’ death,” Carmack-Altwies added.
Baldwin’s attorney Luke Nikas blasted the prosecutors’ decison as “a terrible miscarriage of justice” and that the Emmy-winner “relied on the professionals with whom he worked, who assured him the gun did not have live rounds,” in a statement to NPR. Nikas added, “We will fight these charges, and we will win.”