Alec Baldwin says he didn?t pull the trigger in Rust shooting

Alec Baldwin says he did not pull the trigger on the gun that accidentally killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the movie Rust in October.

Hutchins, 42, was killed, and director Joel Souza, 48, injured when the gun Baldwin was holding went off during rehearsals for the western on a ranch outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico - a rare filming fatality that sent shockwaves through Hollywood and has forced a reckoning on the use of weapons on set and cutting corners on production safety.

In a promo for the ABC interview, Baldwin's first since the tragedy, George Stephanopoulos is shown asking the actor to confirm that it wasn't in the script for the trigger to be pulled. "Well, the trigger wasn't pulled. I didn't pull the trigger," Baldwin says. Stephanopoulos confirms, "So you never pulled the trigger?" to which Baldwin answers, "No, no, no, no. I would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them. Never."

Stephanopoulos, in an appearance on Wednesday morning on Good Morning America, described the 80-minute sit-down as "raw" and "intense".

The journalist described Baldwin, 63, as "devastated" yet "very candid" and "forthcoming". The actor "answered every question" and discussed Hutchins, meeting with her family, and his account of what happened on set that day. "I have to tell you, I was surprised in many places over the course of that hour and twenty minutes we sat down yesterday," Stephanopoulos said.

"I've done thousands of interviews in the last 20 years at ABC," he said. "This was the most intense I've ever experienced."

The Sante Fe county sheriff's office is investigating the shooting, largely focused on how live rounds, which are banned on set, came to be in the gun held by Baldwin.