164: Alec Baldwin's Sit-Down with ABC News: A Public Relations Post-Analysis

Did you watch the Alec Baldwin interview on 2020 with George Stephanopoulos Last week? I did. Welcome to a podcast that uses current events and tested media and PR strategies to help you manage a crisis and build an indestructible reputation. Whose reputation is on shaky ground at the moment is actor Alec Baldwin. Baldwin sat down with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News for a broadcast last Thursday night, giving his account of the tragedy in which he wanted to share.

What.

So what prompted him to sit down for the interview? If you are involved in a criminal investigation as well as a civil lawsuit, why would you decide to sit down for a network interview? I asked Jodi Fisher. He is the hashtags public relations guy on Twitter and a vice president at Austin Williams PR and Marketing in New York. What his take is on the choice that Alec Baldwin took to sit down with George Stephanopoulos. I should say here. Jodi reached out to me first to have the conversation to go live on Instagram, and I said, hey, perhaps you could do me a solid and we can just do this for the podcast, because I knew we were going to have a good conversation. For people like us who follow these things, it's not so much for the criminality of it or the case itself. We are looking at the public relations and crisis management aspect of it. And really the question is, in this episode, should Alec Baldwin sit down for an interview? At this point, we're going to share our takes on the risks. Baldwin's objective. Did it work? This is an episode about answering the question, do you do media interviews when you are backed into a corner? Take a listen. All right, Jodi, here we are. Thank you for joining me. This is our video podcast. This is my first video podcast. Can you hear me?

Yes, I can hear you. Hello, Molly, how are you? Hi.

Great. I'm great. Now I had that moment of panic where I thought, where's Jody? Where's Jodi?

Here I am here. Uncharacteristically quiet. Yes.

Yes. Well, you weren't quiet yesterday when you did me a favor and reached out to me about speaking about Alec Baldwin again. Okay. And I was so happy that you that you chimed in. This was not going to be the podcast topic for this week, but I did did bump my podcast for this week. My producer's like, but I said, it's Alec Baldwin. We have to talk about it. So thank you, Jodi, for bringing the idea to me. We're going to discuss the big interview, right?

Absolutely. The big sit down with George Stephanopoulos that aired as we Taped this last night, so less than 24 hours ago. But I brought this up to you because I know you and I are both fascinated with the PR implications of this. Right. And you know, let's put the disclaimer out there right away. We're not here to talk about what happened to the criminal investigation or the, you know, who did what, where, who's responsible. We're not. We're here to talk about the messaging around this, the PR way that this spins out. And you and I are just fascinated with how this is playing out, most specifically, at least for me, because this is Alec Baldwin, the consummate self promoter. And let's be kind and just call him the consummate self promoter. Right, sure. This is a guy who doesn't know how to go away. And I think that's part of his problem.

Right, right, right, right. Well, but does Alec Baldwin want to go away?

He doesn't.

Or need to go away?

No. In that respect, he is cut from the same cloth as a specific former president of ours who's still not far enough in the rear view mirror for.

Me and not surprising, made an appearance in this interview. So, Jodi, you watched as you and I discussed offline. I was at a high school girls hockey game, but I did tape it and then I came home and realized that didn't work. But I was able to view it this morning on Hulu. Could you set up the background for the few people who have no idea what happened in New Mexico? Do you think you could do the roundup there?

I'll give it a shot. So, long story short, tragic accident on the set of a movie that Alec Baldwin was starring in, as well as billed as a producer or maybe even executive producer. So he's got a financial stake in this as well as being the talent on the set. Tragic accident. He's filming a scene where he's got a gun in his hand. Gun goes off, wounds two people, kills one of them, and just horrible, horrible tragedy unfolds after that. There was a, that this was several weeks ago. Over the course of those several weeks, Alec Baldwin has made several, I'll say, pop up appearances in the media where he has sort of spontaneously given comments which as PR people, you know, I think you and I, Molly, we look at as crisis PR people, we cringe. We're like, don't do that. Don't do that, please. It's unscripted. You're wading into dangerous waters. But then brink us up to last night where he sits down with George Stephanopoulos and this was a taped interview and it was heavily edited and I think heavily edited in his favor.

You're coming in hot. That was one of the first things that I was going to say. Could we. Okay, you brought us to the present, you brought us to last night. Let's just start with the interview and let's just talk about the interview first. The choice of George Stephanopoulos.

Smart.

And also the, the editing piece of it. What do you think?

Very smart. George Stephanopoulos is a well respected journalist, I don't think, known for asking hard questions, but not a softball guy either, kind of down the middle. And I've got to imagine that they have some kind of a relationship as well. So social relationship as well. I can't believe that Alec Baldwin and George Stephanopoulos had never crossed paths.

Well, Jody, Mr. Long island yourself, you know that both Alec Baldwin and George Stephanopoulos move in the same circles in.

The Hamptons for sure. Yes. Yeah.

I think in this interview you could clearly see that they are more than.

Just acquaintances and an intentional choice by his PR team. Right. To sit down with George Stephanopoulos versus anybody else.

Yes. So George got the win because he was going to get ratings. He was going to get the streaming ratings by having the follow up, it was live broadcast on ABC 20 and then Hulu has the rights to 2020 and then you have the streaming opportunity there. So it is a business after all. And I agree with you, that's what I noticed is George, we want to say, oh, they weren't doing him any favors. George was doing Alec definitely some favors in this interview.

For sure. For sure. And from again, from the PR perspective, that's part of the calculus of who you, of why you do the interview and who you're going to sit down with them because you think about what kind of questions you're going to get and how you can as the PR person. And this is not cynical at all. How can you navigate and manipulate the questions in the interview to get out the message that you want to get out? And that brings us up to why did Alec Baldwin sit down to do an interview in the context of him one, being at the center of a criminal investigation because he is part of a criminal investigation that the, that the district attorney is doing in New Mexico. Is it in New Mexico or Arizona? I'm sorry?

Yeah, New Mexico. Criminal criminal investigation and civil litigation.

And there's two, two civil lawsuits that have already been filed and by Baldwin's own admission last night in this interview, there's going to be a third. Of course there's going to be a third. The husband of the woman who was killed. And there's probably going to be more. So you've got all this litigation that is swirling pr people like you and me would typically say, and lawyers for sure would typically say, don't do any interviews because it's all admissible in court. Every last word can be read back. And if he makes a misstep, and that's why we talk about these spontaneous side of the road interviews that Baldwin has done with media. All of that is admissible, every single word. And so you got to be really, really careful. But this is why you pick a guy like George Stephanopoulos, where you can navigate and manipulate those questions to get out the message you want to get out. And I think he brought some really clear messages into this interview.

So the choice of George Stephanopoulos. But also, Jodi, you and I are of similar ages, sitting down and hearing, oh, so and so is sitting down with X to discuss Y. We don't have these big television news events aside from Oprah speaking to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and Oprah with Adele. And what made me think about this is I've been watching impeachment, about the Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton story and just going back in time. And I know you would remember all of that when that happened. And one of the scenes where after everything came out, her mother, Monica's mother is saying to her, flowers from Diane Sawyer. You know, all the anchors coming in and it's such a different time. Jody, isn't it like for a PR now, crisis management at the top of that playbook? We're not sitting down with big anchors anymore. Because I think part of it is anchors don't have the hefty that they used to. What do you think?

I agree. And I have a slightly different perspective. I think some of them and George Stephanopoulos, I would put in this category, have translated that heft onto social media. And you could see this interview being very easily sliced and diced and served up in all of our social media feeds over the next couple of days. I mean, this is going to make the rounds on Twitter and everywhere else. And I think that they, you know, looking, looking through social, my social media feeds last night in the lead up to this interview, you could see you used the word promotion. This was heavily promoted on social media. Like, this is the event to tune into. Here's the link. I mean, almost to the point where I was like, ew, this is a Little icky.

I know it is. But you know what? It's kind of like our Super Bowl. It's always like serving it on a platter. You use the term and we won't spend all this time on it. But certainly the optics of this interview is a big part of it. You use the term slice and dice and you noticed exactly what I noticed. This was an edited interview, and not just for time. This was strategically edited. This was editorially edited, in my opinion.

What do you think there was? Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, now, let's disclaimer. Of course it's going to be edited, right? Because you're going to take this long interview and you're going to cut out the dead space in the conversation. You're going to make it sort of make sense and get it right for the medium for tv. We're not against that. That's fine. I noticed one editorial jump that was like, literally, Baldwin is leaning to his right and then he's leaning to his left. When the two halves of the sentence. I wish I had written it down, but I. But I saw it and I was like, whoa, that's a cut. That's a jump.

Yes, it was a jump.

And so my brain goes, wow, you're taking to. You're taking a part of a sentence that may have been really important and you're pulling it out of the middle to make it say what you think it should say, want it to say whatever. And so that's what made me go, wow, heavily edited interview.

Yeah, it came up. And I don't know if we were referring to the same one, but it came up towards the end of it when George was asking in a very pressing question about his culpability. And Alec, who is very rehearsed and he's good at what he does, very good. He did not have an answer and he hemmed a little and he did move. So you and I could be talking about the same cut. It was a heavy cut. And it was. If they cut out a lot of what he said first and then they left the polished response in there.

Yeah, that's jumping to the end of the interview, which I really want to talk with you about. Cause it was one of the things I think Alec Baldwin did really badly. But maybe we'll save that for a minute. I think that the reason he sat down for this interview was crystal clear for me. And I think this interview was, despite what you and I said before about, oh, my goodness, you know, how do you sit down for an interview? This is rolling the dice. Right. With your reputation, doing an interview inside of this, all this swirling litigation and everything else, your typical PR strategy is to kind of go away and keep your mouth shut. Right, right. And so here he is sitting down for this, you know, this bright headlight kind of an interview. He did two things really well, and I think he did what he came to do. One, he got out the message that he didn't pull the trigger. And that's in a lot of the headlines that you're seeing in the coverage of this. I didn't pull the trigger. And he tells the story about how he was. They were doing this scene and he was pointing the gun and pulling the hammer of this gun back. And I think that was important, for it was clearly important to him, but also because we all assume that when we hear someone was shot, we assume someone pulls the trigger. Right. That's our understanding of how a gun works. And so I think was really important. But. But that's also sort of this cold blooded kind of point a gun at a person and pull the trigger kind of a concept. Right. And he wanted to dispel that. And he did a great job at that because he went over that detail again and again and again. The other thing he did in that same moment is that he explained why he was pointing the gun, where he was pointing it, because she told me to, because I was working with the director. She's sitting there with the camera in front of me. We're in these tight quarters and. And I'm pointing the gun in her direction because she wants me to point it at that direction. And that's why I'm doing this. He did those two things really, really well. And. And I think if that's all he came to do. Home run for him.

Yeah, I would agree with you. He was surgical in his messaging precision on what he was there to do now. But, Jody, let me ask you, what was he there to do? Why was he sitting down? What was his objective?

I think his. Well, like I said, the one objective he had was to reframe the story, reframe people's perception of what happened. Because everybody's got this idea of what happened. Oh, he picked up a gun and pointed at her. Boom. The other thing he came to do, and I think he did this really well, is he raised this specter of. Of conspiracy. Who brought the bullet to the set? Bullets aren't supposed. Live ammunition is not supposed to be on a set. Who brought it? And he even said it out loud. The Zapruder film. Right. He raised this specter of the JFK assassination, which is for people of a certain age, Molly, is our big like, you know, the grassy knoll and the second shooter and the whole thing. He actually pulled out the JFK assassination and dropped it in the middle of his own scenario and got people going, wow, intrigue. Alec has gotta be innocent, right?

Exactly. Alec is being assassinated.

He's being set up. He's being set up.

Exactly. We are watching the Alec Baldwin Zapruder film, you know, frame by frame. Yeah. So I agree with you. I also think that there was another outcome that Alec Baldwin is hoping for in this media interview. Because you and I will both agree. Ballsy, Ballsy. To sit down and do a primetime interview when you are under investigation and a part of litigation, civil litigation, without a doubt. I think two things were happening here. To step back just about the Alex Baldwin Persona in my work, I look so much to the human element and I think part of it is just being our age. We've lived long enough to understand experience. Maybe being a female, maybe having intuition, you know, people who've kind of been through ringers, you know, whatever is. I am so conditioned to always look at the human element here and especially in crisis management. And I use it for predicting where people are gonna go and preventing it from happening. Like when, you know, there's a certain personality out there. Alec Baldwin is an actor. He's known for being, you know, a blowhard, a bloviator, you know, ARR. And we can't fault him for that because that's how, you know to be an actor you have to have that armor, you know, if you will. He's also intelligent. He's a guy who sits down on, has an app, a thesaurus app that he uses, you know, frequently. He's masterful in articulating what he's trying to say.

He's got a brilliant podcast on NYC on WNYC here in New York.

He's a terrific interviewer, interviewer, communicator. He's excellent at it. But his biggest downfall, in my opinion, is the hubris. Okay, is the ego. The ego is what led him, which I love how you call it a pop up interview. I label it as a press conference on the side of the road of Vermont. He decided to hold his own press conference. That is ego. Also, it just came out last week. Someone is writing a book from the set of 30 Rock and the Nuggets that are being pulled from that. You look at Jack Donaghy, the character of Alec Baldwin, and he's Funny, he's witty, he's clever, he's part of the brand. That why I like Alec Baldwin. But behind the scene, this guy was. This guy was an asshole. He was really difficult to deal with. Okay? All the things we read in the press was true. So this is coming out at the same time. I think part of it, a big part of it is ego, that he is sitting down here. He does not want other people in control of his. Of his reputation, of his narrative, of his story. And he believes he's so smart, he's gonna control his own narrative. So that's one. But also, and this is maybe me in the impeachment TV series on Fox, you know, I'm in the world of Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton and that whole, you know, throwback time. There was a scene when Monica Lewinsky's lawyer, William Ginsburg, after they made the deal with the feds that Monica Lewinsky would have immunity, William Gittinsburg went on all the Sunday shows and started to pontificate about how they were treating Monica. And Kenneth Starr pulled it because he said he's speaking to Bill Clinton right now. So I think it's very similar. I think Alec Baldwin is speaking to the sheriff's department in Santa Fe and he's speaking to Matthew Elena's husband, and he is telling them, this is my side of it. And I think the hubris is he is trying to intimidate or at least tell, you know, this sheriff's department, this is my story. So if you want to come after me, this is my side of it. I don't know if I'm being a conspiracy theorist, but that's how I feel.

That's a great point, though, because now looking at this interview in the rear view mirror, if you're the district attorney or the police who are investigating this, you have to deal with what he said last night.

Yes.

And now you're getting questions today. Is that what happened? Baldwin said this. Is that what happened? Your. Your media department is lighting up, your phones are ringing today, based on everything he said last night, really, really important. And I. And I agree with you about the hubris and about the ego, because he spent the first 15 minutes of this interview basically deflecting and blaming everybody else. I mean, he blamed right or wrong. And again, we're not here to discuss who did what, right or wrong. We're talking about what he said and the way it plays from a PR perspective. He blamed the crew, he blamed the armorer. He. He told a story about how they were Complaining about lousy hotel rooms and safety on the set. And he would, I was going to pay for rooms for them. And then they left. You know, he, then, then they, they, they wrote this open letter. The, the, some of the crew wrote this open letter and there was a response from the producers which conveniently left out in the piece. He's one of them.

Yeah. Yeah, well, it was so like woven in.

Yeah, but it's like he's, he's trying to play both sides here too. It was very interesting, but it was clear he was also making himself the focus of this tragedy. Tragedy throughout. You know, I'm a dad, I have a family. You know, again and again and again about how hard, about hard this. And I'm, look, I'm not trying to say, I mean he was clearly up close and personal with what happened, not taking that away from him, but went to great lengths in this interview as well to talk about how much this has impacted him and long before. And again, maybe this is just a function of the editing and the way they put this interview together. Long before he got around to talking about her husband and how it's impacted him and how it's impacted their nine year old son. I think that was, that was not done well at all. I think it was.

I agree with you. So if we were to frame this podcast, I mean, certainly I always want there to be a takeaway that someone listening, a communicator, a leader, you know, someone who's interested in how to message. The device that Alec Baldwin was using here was storytelling for the purpose of framing. He wanted to shape the narrative for reputational reasons, but also for legal reasons. He wanted to let people know, as you pointed out, he is a victim. He is a victim as well. He didn't want to be too heavy handed with it. He had to weave it in and he was masterful. He was someone not paying attention or not watching it like you and I do. Like, you know, clip by clip, one would walk away and say, oh, Alec, Alec, oh my gosh, this is just such a tragedy. But you and I can hear and anyone who does this for a living can hear precisely what Al Baldwin is doing.

Yeah, he did a great job from a public relations perspective, a messaging perspective. He was, he was sharp as attack man. He did a terrific job. My one problem was when he got that question from Stephanopoulos and said, do you, do you bear any guilt for this or responsibility for this? And he said, no, no. That was shocking to me because I think he could have answered that A little differently and a little better. And it reminded me again of a former president of ours who stood in the Rose Garden and said, do you take any responsibility for Covid? And he said, no.

No.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, accident, you know, 99. Sure. Accident, of course, bear responsibility. I think he could have said. I think he could have answered it a little bit differently. And the guilt piece, I think is an easy thing to do because that, again, goes back to hubris and it goes back to sort of the way you feel. Right. Of course I feel guilty about this. This happened right in front of me. I was hand. I was handling the gun. But is it my responsibility? No. I mean, he could have framed it a different way, but just to say no shocked me.

Right. Yeah. And I think that answer was his legal answer. I don't know if he was necessarily expecting it.

Yeah.

You know, coming out of George Stephanopoulos mouth like that, you know, so direct. But he had a choice. He could do. He could spin or he could save. He could cya that he actually said.

Someone'S responsible, but it's not me.

But it's not me. I know it's not me who's responsible for Alayna Hutchins death. And he repeated this over and over and over. You know, I feel some responsibility for what happened because he was obviously there and he was holding the gun. But he said, I feel that someone is responsible for what happened. And I can't say who that is, but I know it's not me. That is shaping a narrative, without a doubt, a legal one and a PR one as well. Now, Jodi, the other piece, and I wanted to ask you about this, that I noticed. One is the use of the terminology low budget and independent film. Did you notice that they ping pong between those terms?

Yes.

Used independent when it helped what it was, you know, to show that this wasn't like a. Like a big production, you know, straight out of Hollywood.

You know, Spielberg wants to save money.

Yeah. But then turns around and we're making.

It for $5 million. Yeah. Right.

Compared himself to. He noted Spielberg, also Scorsese, you know, he's putting himself in the same shoes as them, saying all of them. But you know what? Goodfella is a mobster movie where I don't know how many people were killed in that movie. No one was injured in the making of that film. Right. Also, what about his reaction when George Stepanopoulos mentioned George Clooney and George Clooney's comments about Alec Baldwin?

Yeah. They even played. They played the Clooney bit. Yeah, he got a little tight.

Oh, I love that, Jody. Yeah, he got tight because that's. And again, that's that human behavior piece of it is that's when you could see the rise in Alec Baldwin because it's a fellow actor. And I would assume that Alec Baldwin and George Clooney have been up for a number of the same roles. And George Clooney is now living in Lake Como and, you know, he's a producer, director. He is making what, a billion dollars on his tequila? He doesn't really have a lot of cares in the world. I think Alec Baldwin, now he's got some serious. Just home issues, like money, you know, and, you know, he's an actor and he's done well, but he can't have that much money there. I think he's fighting for his.

Not with the number of kids that he's got.

I know. Well, can we move to. Can we move to Hilaria for a moment?

Go ahead. Oh, I know this is one of your favorites. Go ahead.

Well, did you, did you see the New York Post photos of the two of them yesterday by chance?

Oh, I missed that. Go ahead.

Okay, so they were pap photos. They were definitely from a photo agency. Alec Baldwin and Hilaria were going to get coffee at. I think it was called Mad Men coffee, which I thought someone wasn't thinking that that went out, but they went there and Hilaria was wearing slinky. I wanna be like Alec Baldwin. Like, what were all the adjectives at Alec Baldwin? Well, she was slinky and snakeskin and tight leggings. She was wearing stiletto heels, boots, had this gold plated jacket on. Hair, you know, hair out, a scowl for every frame. But the secondary, like the adjacent PR story has been watching Alec Baldwin and Hilaria and what they've been doing on their own and all the paparazzi, paparazzi shots that they've been setting up. So what do you think? And I don't know how much you're following it, this adjacent PR campaign about framing themselves as a family, have you noticed any of that?

I think they've. I haven't noticed it specifically, but I think they've always done that. And to your point, the side of the road interview in Vermont, you know, his opening line is, my kids are in the car crying. You awful reporters following us, doing your job. You know, I'm not allowed to make any. Well, here's the thing. He's always the victim. He's always the victim. You know, and, and, and even in this interview last night, you know, he, he started out, he is the victim, he, he cries. Look, I'm not, I'm not disputing that this was a traumatic incident for him probably, but yeah, making him the focus himself, the focus of the tragedy, even down to when he told the story about meeting her husband and you know, wrapped my arms around him, blah, blah, blah. And I told him. What was his phrase that he used? I'm doing everything I can to cooperate.

Yes.

Really?

Yes.

That's what you tell the man who just lost his wife. I'm doing everything I can to cooperate. That's a curious choice of words.

See, I, that's where I think, though, he is trying to use. Exert power for sure over Matthew, you know, over Elena's husband. And he's trying to, I don't want to say bully, but Alec Baldwin is a bully. And that is, that is a, that is a tactic that has certainly worked for him in the past. And not because he's been arrested for it certainly, but that this goes back to why he's doing this. I think he's sending a message to Matthew and even when he said, well, of course he's going to sue me, my insurance for insured, you know, so he went down the insurance route, which we all know is going to happen, but he didn't want. Alec Baldwin doesn't want Matthew to gouge him, you know, and just. And so that's why he had to frame. Which this is where I had a problem with this. Matthew and Elena's son against his six kids and how he's, how he, his kids are the same age.

I'm a dad too.

And I'm a dad too. And as soon as the mother comes in the room, my kids don't notice me anymore because they want to be with the mother. I think he was sending a loud message to Matthew and that's really why I think he sat down for that interview. I think that was. That and the Santa Fe Sheriff Department. Those were the only two people he was speaking to. And he wanted to get some grudges out there too, with other people. But I think that was the issue, or that's what he was trying to do.

I agree with you. Yeah. Audience of a select few for this interview.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So, Jody, so I have to ask you if you were handling a client such as Alec Baldwin, let's say he went down the road to your shop and asked for your help or a client in a similar situation where they're Facing perhaps a part of a criminal investigation or civil litigation, they're backed into a corner. What would you be telling them to do? Especially if they're like, alec and I want to speak. I have to say something. What would you say?

Well, I think it's interesting because we talked earlier about how typical crisis PR strategy here, especially with, you know, your legal team sitting shoulder to shoulder with your PR team, is to say nothing, to be as quiet as possible because you want to not throw fuel on the fire for the legal case. And I think to your point, in this case, you've got the PR team and the legal team strategizing in how they can actually move and manipulate the story to create a better foundation for both the public relations and the legal strategy going forward. So I think that in this case, the typical crisis PR response and legal response of say nothing was the exact wrong advice. And what he did last night was exactly right for him because to your point, he sat down, he reframed this story, he got out some very specific details that he wanted to get out. He shifted the focus over to the criminal investigation of who brought the bullet to the set and. And created all of this smoke around what actually happened and repositioned himself as just as much a victim as anybody else. So I think in this case, I'm not that smart, but I would have, in hindsight, I would have advised to do exactly this. Sit down with George Stephanopoulos.

Are you telling me you thought it was okay to do this interview?

I did. I do. I think it was brilliant for him. I really do.

Jody. Last night, when I saw the promo yesterday, when we saw the promos coming in, and I had tweeted, alexa record the train wreck, you know, at 8pm and Alexa didn't record it. You know, I. I screwed up my recording, but after I watched it, I didn't know if I was going to be alone in this. I thought the same thing. Yeah, it was okay to do it.

It should have been a train wreck. It should have been a train wreck.

It should have been in different hands. It would have been a train wreck, I think.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Cause Alec Baldwin is an actor and media interviews.

And a hothead.

Yeah, and a hothead. But media interviews are acting. You memorize lines. You have an affect that you deliver. You wear the costume. I know this guy has probably been keeping himself up all night on caffeine to get the bags under his eyes. Like, this is a new part of the wardrobe. I've noticed just in the last two weeks is we're seeing the heavy, heavy, you know, bags under his eyes.

I haven't slept.

I haven't slept because I'm sleep.

I have dreams. I wake up.

I wake up. And then also, you know, the paparazzi shots of, you know, being out and downcast and on the phone and talking to his wife. Hilaria's not playing along all the time, which every time I see her, I just think, elena, Elena. If you're going to pronounce her name, get it right, Elena. And then Alex says, on the side of the road, let me do this weekend here. Like just the glimpses into their marriage. I find this fascinating alone, but I agree with you. I think that in different hands it would have been a disaster or a train wreck. But Alec Baldwin is a good actor and he acted his way through a media interview. I do think some of the crying jags were, you know, that emotion was genuine or he could tap into it. Some of it felt a little artificial. I don't know. Do you think, are you with me? That he conjured up some tears?

Yeah, yeah, I think so. You know, and I think he does it strategically when he needs to do it. But I'm also not going to again, I'm not going to, you know, say that it's not a true reaction as well.

Yeah. I think you and I both agree it's a tragedy. It's a sad God even watching it yesterday with the sun. And it's just a horrible, really, it's just horrible for that family. And you do feel for Alec Baldwin and his family. Certainly it's a tragedy all around. But, you know, there are repercussions there and consequences when this happens. And he was a producer on the film. Yes, he was an actor, but he also was a producer. And as much as he was trying to frame it that he had no culpability. And the armor is the one who does everything. When you have a 24 year old armor and it's her second production, you're going to take some time on that. Or you might, you know, you might be very careful with that gun. In the end when he says, I didn't do it, it's like saying, I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky. There I go back to impeachment. But he did do it, right? I mean, he did. He pulled the trigger. He pulled the trigger.

Well, he did. He pulled that hammer back and he let it go. Right.

Whatever detail that he wants to say. Oh, and the last thing too, before we wrap up. What was curious where I Thought the wheels kind of came off the interview a little. Is when he was describing. And this is where George Stephanopoulos was doing his work. He asked for detail about what happened. And when Alec said, oh, well, it went off. And I thought, you know, I thought was there blowback. What are you calling that wattage? I forget like he called it.

Yeah. Something. You and I are an accident, right?

Yeah. We're not prop. We're not working the problem.

This is where. Yeah. You said the wheels came off his story when he started to storytell. And he said, well, 15 minutes and then 60 minutes and then 45 minutes, he started to get into details about what happened. And he just went south fast.

Oh, my gosh. So. So she went down. Was it a heart attack? Did something like fly off and hear the shoulder? She was shot to death. I mean. Oh. And okay. And he then later said when the assistant director was shot, he came out. He was shot. So he knew it was serious. He knew it was a problem. So that's where I have to say he was not telling the truth.

Yeah.

And he was. He was scrambling. He was tap dancing.

And I think his. Whether, again, focusing on the public relations aspect of this and the prep of this, when you sit down to do an interview, you get prepped. Whatever happened here, his narrative in that part of it, it did not measure up to everything else he wanted to achieve here. So I think that was. And I would be very interested to sit as a fly on the wall in the deposition. Absolutely.

That's a really good point, Jody. He was prepped to the hilt to explain. I did not pull the trigger. He had everything. It looked as if he was not planning or counting on or George let him in on the fact, like, okay, now we're going to go to the step by step of exactly what happened. His story did not match up because it was 45 minutes. Then he was taken out of the room. The church where they were filming.

He was riffing.

He was riffing.

Yeah.

And then found out, like, oh, then they brought the bullet out. Did you know there was a bullet? And here is. I'm using this intentionally here. I don't know what else to say. The smoking gun is the 911 call. Do you remember that 911 call? How they transcribed it? Or it was actually the live one where that person seemed very. I won't say rehearsed, but was told specifically what to say she was. She couched the phrase of. There was. I think the 911 operator said, is. Has there been a shooting? And she said. She didn't answer that and said two people have been shot or injured or something. I don't.

Yeah, it was a curious. I remember what you're saying, too. It was curious phrasing. She didn't just say there was a shooting or someone got shot. She used a different phrase. And it was. Yeah, it was very intentional.

This is bad. If we were more organized, if we had more time, we would come up with the exact transcript. All right, Jodi, at the end of every podcast, I always include one indestructible PR tip. It's that one takeaway from the episode, from the lessons learned. If anyone were to learn one lesson that they could take as they go forth in life, if they ever find themselves in this position or working with someone in this. This position or counseling them, what would you say? What would be the one indestructible PR tip?

This. This interview to me was all about prep. This was all about him having a very specific set of things that he wanted to say and saying them over and over and over and over again. And I'm sure he said those things as much as we heard them two or three times. I bet he said them nine or ten and they just cut him down. That is. That is, to borrow your phrase, an indestructible tip. When you're doing media interviews, you've got to tell your story. You don't sit down to be questioned. You sit down to say the things you wanted to say. And boy, Alec Baldwin did that masterfully in this.

I could not agree with you more. You cannot go into any interview unprepared. He learned his lesson from, again, love it. His pop up interview in Vermont. His handlers were probably pulling their hair out after he did that. And I think he was prepped within an inch of his life. It's almost like a presidential debate. Like he was probably sitting there and his handlers were throwing every question imaginable, but they focused on the legal instead of focusing on what actually happened. So that was the other piece of it as well. So if you're going to go into a hot interview like this, you have to make sure that you have answers for every single question and be prepared for anything. Jodi, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. Your hot take on this hot issue, what's it going to end up? How is this all going to end up for Alec Baldwin?

Do we think, oh, wow, there's the $64,000 question, right? Who. Who knows, really? Who knows based on his performance? If it goes the way he wants. If it goes the way last night went, he's gonna be just fine.

Yeah, I think he'll be sued. I mean, clearly he's going to be sued. I don't anticipate, like, I think this worked. I don't think he's going to be criminally charged. Maybe there's at best, maybe in voluntary manslaughter. I mean, we'll see. But I think Alec will live to see another day. He won't have quite the, you know, the strength of the brand that he had once before, and he might be relegated to, you know, indie movies, you know, for the rest of his life, but, yeah, he'll. He'll still be around.

Well, he said in the interview he's not sure he wants to work anymore anyway.

Well, again, playing the victim.

World's smallest violin, right?

Yes, I will. I will walk off the stage, and you will never be seen again.

Never see me again.

You'll rue the day that you. You made me not act anymore. Oh, my gosh. Well, Jodi, where can people find you and hear you?

You can always find me on Twitter. I'm at Jody Fisher. Jody F I S H E R Same on all the other socials. Sometimes if you type that in, you'll find me. And please tune in on your favorite podcast app to the PR Podcast. We do a show every week with a guest who is a decision maker in the world of news, whether that's a PR professional like you or me, Molly, or an editor, a reporter, a videographer, photographer. We talk about how news gets made and the decisions that go into how news gets made. So check us out there if you're interested again on your favorite podcast app.

I love your podcast, Jodi. And I love riffing on topics like this, so we'll do it again on the next one.

Looking forward to it. Thanks, Molly.

All right, thanks, Jody. My thanks to Jody Fisher for joining me last week to discuss the ongoing saga of Alec Baldwin. You can join in on our conversations on Twitter. Whenever something happens, he and I are going back and forth, as are a lot of people on these issues. So definitely give me a follow at Molly McPherson and Jody as well. He's at Jody Fisher, thanks so much for listening. Bye for now.