BREAKING NEWS: Alec Baldwin explains why he did not participate in new Halyna Hutchins Rust documentary, according to director.giang

The new documentary Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna, which examines the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust, includes interviews from several central figures who were present the day she died.

Neither actor Alec Baldwin or the convicted armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed appear among interviews that were conducted by the documentary’s director and Hutchins’ friend, Rachel Mason.

Dave Halls, who pleaded guilty to the charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon, did participate in the documentary to detail the day Hutchins died.

Speaking with Variety for an interview published Tuesday, March 11, Mason shed light on why Baldwin, 66, did not participate.

“I did reach out to Alec. It was not necessarily to say, ‘I want to do an interview,’ but it was a basic, just general communication,” Mason said. “He was working on his own projects. He could not participate.”

Baldwin stood trial last July after being indicted for alleged involuntary manslaughter after Hutchins’ death. Hutchins, 42, was killed and Rust writer-director Joel Souza was injured after a prop gun that Baldwin was holding on the New Mexico set discharged.

The charge was dismissed after Baldwin’s attorneys alleged prosecutors had withheld evidence. Gutierrez-Reed, 28, who was responsible for overseeing prop weapons on set, was sentenced to 18 months in prison, the maximum penalty, in April. The documentary details both Hutchins’ death as well as the highly publicized Rust trials.

One of Baldwin’s recent projects is his family’s new reality series The Baldwins, which was filmed amid last year’s trial. Mason told Variety they are aware of the series but “haven’t watched it” adding that “I’ve just been head down and finishing this film.”

While speaking to PEOPLE at an event celebrating the grand opening of the new Planet Hollywood in Times Square on March 11, Baldwin spoke about the TLC series, which premiered Feb. 23, admitting it was a “unique time” for the family when they filmed the show.

The reality show began filming the month before Baldwin headed to trial — and the series shows how he and wife Hilaria, 41, juggled parenting and day-to-day life with their seven kids alongside the legal proceedings.

“When I think of the reality show, many things occur to me after the fact like when we were doing it, it was a bit of a unique time for us, but afterward when we did it, I realized that that’s who we are,” Baldwin said.

The documentary was previewed during an FYC event on March 4 in West Hollywood, California. During the event’s Q&A, Mason and Souza discussed the challenges of making Last Take as well as Souza’s disappointment that the film focused so heavily around the shooting and less on Hutchins’ life.

“I hoped it might have a little more Halyna in it, or been a little more about Halyna,” Souza said during the event.

Last Take co-producer Julee Metz explained that Mason did have a “clear vision” in the beginning “to tell Halyna’s story of her life and her work and some of her death.”

“But over time, and as we gained new partners on this project, it became clear that there was a commercial value to the story of Rust and that needed to be part of the story that we had to tell. So I think it became less about Halyna’s life and more about her death, but that’s what we ended up having to do,” Metz explained.

Souza later explained why participating in the documentary “wasn’t an easy decision” for him.

“I think I’m pretty protective, fiercely, of my privacy, but I knew that Rachel was a very good friend of Halyna’s and I think that Julie was as well. And it became very easy very quickly to trust both of them,” Souza said.

“I knew what was in their heart with it and where they were coming from with it and Matt’s [Hutchins’ husband] involvement in it was also vital for me. And no one looks forward to sort of sitting in a chair and opening a vein for people. But I felt I was in very safe and very caring hands the whole time.”

Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna is now on Hulu.