Alec Baldwin is back behind the mic with a new true-crime podcast.
It is not-new territory for the actor, who for the past decade hosted an hour-long radio show, "Here's the Thing," which often featured prominent guest artists and policymakers. However, he put the show on the back burner following the tragedy on the "Rust" movie set in Santa Fe last October.
The new podcast, "Art Fraud," marks his return but because of its unique scripted format, Baldwin won't have to answer any difficult questions about the "Rust" shooting. Instead, he will delve into the historic Knoedler Gallery scandal that cost tens of millions of dollars and ultimately led to the venue's collapse.
"The kind of thing he's doing with this fraud podcast is very, very much in a genre that is really popular," Robert Thompson, the director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, told Fox News. "Matter of fact, the first podcasts to really break through were these true crime kinds of things."
Commenting on Baldwin's decision to put "Here's the Thing" on a hiatus, Thompson said it made sense following the death of Halyna Hutchins on the "Rust" set on Oct. 21.
"Given the gravity of the 'Rust' situation, the first thing that Alec Baldwin does after that, you want to make sure it can't be really in any way be tasteless, or that you could read something into it that could comment upon the ‘Rust’ [incident]," he said. "I think a true-crime show like this is probably a fairly safe bet."
A podcast focusing on art fraud is far removed from what took place in Santa Fe.
"I don't think you want to have a true crime thing about a shooting," Thompson added. "That would be a totally different situation."
The news comes as Baldwin faces a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the widowed husband of the cinematographer killed when a gun Baldwin was using during a rehearsal fired off a live bullet. Shortly after, Baldwin posted a video of a lit-up sign seemingly from the Parrish Art Museum with the slogan "everything is going to be alright" on Instagram.
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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