‘Rust’ Actor Swen Temmel on How the Film Crew’s Lives Have ‘Changed Forever’ 1 Year After Shooting (Exclusive)

Rust actor Swen Temmel can hardly believe it’s been a year since Halyna Hutchins died on the set of Alec Baldwin’s film. For the 31-year-old actor, the somber milestone serves as a reminder to reflect on the impact she had — and continues to have — on him and the rest of the cast and crew.

Temmel, who is currently in Bozeman, Montana, filming his latest project, Outlaws, opened up to ET about how the tragedy has affected him personally, the ways he’s coped with it and the flood of emotions that brought him to a literal screeching halt when he set foot on his first Western set since an unimaginable tragedy took the life of a beloved cinematographer.

“Honestly, I can’t believe it’s been a year already,” Temmel tells ET in Montana. “Doesn’t seem that way. All of our lives have changed forever, all the people that were surrounded by the situation or involved with the production or families, everybody was impacted by this event.”

Temmel, who as Drum counts himself as an enemy of the protagonist, was not filming nor rehearsing on Oct. 21, 2021 at the Bonanza Creek Ranch in the desert outside Santa Fe when the prop gun Baldwin was holding fired, killing Hutchins and injuring the film’s director, Joel Souza. Baldwin has consistently maintained he didn’t pull the trigger. Temmel was outside the chapel where the fatal shooting occurred. Production instantly came to a halt and law enforcement agencies descended on the set. Soon, lawyers for those directly involved entered the picture and a myriad of TV networks attempted to establish the timeline of events riddled with complexities throughout.

And while this was all playing out in court and across TV screens nationwide, Temmel and his colleagues tackled how to cope with the tragedy. He said they leaned on each other when they couldn’t shake the bleakness of it all, but they somehow all managed to come together and support each other through this terrible loss.

“We’re all in close contact,” says Temmel, who most recently appeared in the 2022 crime film Bandit, starring Josh Duhamel and Mel Gibson. “It’s one of those things where, at first, it’s every day you’re thinking about it. It’s like, ‘What happened? How did it happen? How could it have happened?’ And then you talk about it so much that it’s almost a little bit therapeutic being able to talk to people, tell the story, tell Hutchins’ story. And then it gets a little more spread out.”

He continues, “I’d be walking down the street, and she always wore like a beanie very far back on her head. So, every time I saw a woman with blonde hair and a beanie I’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s … no.'”

Suffice it to say, Temmel has appreciated life so much more following the onset tragedy.

“You just never know when a tragedy can hit, and it was the most awful experience that we all went through, but it definitely made me become closer to my friends, my family, loved ones, people that were there for me when this all happened,” he says.

Temmel said he met Hutchins for the first time at one of her birthday outings after a mutual friend of theirs invited him. He says they met up several more times after that before finding themselves working on the same film in New Mexico — the period film set in 1880s Kansas where an outlaw named Harland Rust (Baldwin) rescues his 13-year-old grandson who has been sentenced to hang for murder following an accidental shooting. Rust and his grandson become fugitives as they attempt to outrun the U.S. Marshals.

“She talked about this movie that she was going to be a part of, this Western, and just the passion and drive that she had,” Temmel says. “I mean, to be a woman in such a difficult field coming up and being as successful as she was. I’ve never seen anyone more dedicated to their craft and to do what they love to do.”

Temmel recalled Hutchins’ meticulous precision on the set, too.

“I remember standing on set and watching her watch the monitors and it was just this eye darting between the two screens of the camera to make sure that every shot she was getting was perfect,” he says, “and that there wasn’t a footprint in there, that it was truly the most perfect shot that she could possibly get; that the lighting was right. I mean, she commanded that set with so much power and authority, people trusted her. They believed in her and they were all on her side. And we felt that energy and we were all excited to be a part of something that she was so passionate about.”