Austrian Swen Temmel (30) is one of the actors who made the leap to Hollywood. He’s filmed with action giants like Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis. He’s been at home on film sets for years.
For three weeks Swen Temmel has been in front of the camera with another great Hollywood star: Alec Baldwin. Temmel plays a bigger role in the western film “Rust”, while Baldwin is the star of the flick and also acts as a co-producer.
But what happened on Thursday still sounds like a movie. A misfortune that can hardly be put into words. Swen Temmel tries anyway. Because he is one of the eyewitnesses on site when Alec Baldwin accidentally shoots his colleague.
“I was only ten meters away from the scene of the accident,” he told the “Kronen-Zeitung”. He witnessed the tragedy at the “Bonanza Creek Ranch” near Santa Fe, where filming was being carried out in front of a film church on the ranch grounds.
Temme describes what happened immediately after the shot: “A shooting was filmed, and suddenly someone collapsed covered in blood. I was petrified. “
► The person in question is cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. She was fatally hit by the shot, died at the age of only 42, and left behind a husband and son (8). Director Joel Souza survived seriously injured and has since left the hospital.
Actor Temmel was friends with Hutchins privately. On Instagram he says goodbye with a photo of her on set and the words “My heart is broken”.
Temmel, who flew back from Santa Fe to his adopted home Los Angeles on Friday, also witnessed Baldwin’s reaction: “Alec Baldwin was completely shocked and collapsed on the set.”
It is now clear how the accident came about: The film gun was not loaded with a blank cartridge, but inadvertently contained live ammunition. The film team rehearsed a scene for which an assistant director handed Baldwin a film revolver, according to the newspaper “Santa Fe New Mexican”.
He called out to him “Cold Gun”. Baldwin and the assistant both should not have known that the weapon contained live ammunition, so it was a “hot gun”.
Swen Temmel now wants to process what she has experienced in California.
He gets support from the family: His father is the entrepreneur and confectioner Charly Temmel, who is known not only in the USA as the “ice king” and lives in Malibu.
In 1995 Charly Temmel emigrated from Austria to America. Since then, celebrities have been crazy about his ice creams and sweets, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis are among his friends.