International- Lisa Gorlitsky is a Brooklyn, New York-based actress who began her career in commercials at age 7.
- She's played roles involving
weapons on TV shows, films, and theatrical performances, including the "Law & Order" franchise.
This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Lisa Gorlitsky, a Hollywood actress. It has been edited for length and clarity.
The very same day I learned of the tragedy on the set of Rust, a photo popped up in my Facebook memories and brought me to tears.
The image was of me on the set of a TV pilot I'd been filming exactly eight years ago to the day. Sitting in the driver's seat of a car, wearing a crisp white button-down shirt, I stared into the camera, drenched in fake blood, with a gunshot wound to the neck, compliments of the makeup department.
Now years later, while I sat safely at home, I thought of the devastating course of events that cost Halyna Hutchins her life, wondering where the breakdown in communication and safety protocols had taken place that could have led to Alec Baldwin being handed what he was told was a cold gun-meaning it didn't contain live rounds-when, in fact, it wasn't one.
The first time I held a real gun was in college
As a fine arts student at SUNY Purchase, we often used prop guns in our theatre productions. Since the guns we used weren't able to fire or discharge anything, they seemed just like any other prop. We didn't view them as harmful.
Then one day, things unexpectedly changed.
A production I was working on required us to transition from our usual prop gun to a real gun loaded with blanks so an actual shot could be heard and a blast could be seen by the audience.
Until then, we'd always worked alongside our fellow students in the design-tech department when it came to props. But now, standing in front of us was a real grown-up who'd been brought in specifically to teach us about gun safety.
It was a sobering experience and a teaching moment for everyone involved that day
Prior to that day, I had never seen a gun up close before or felt the weight of one in the palm of my hand. Yet there I was, for the first time in my life, holding an actual gun.
One of the first things we were taught was never to point a gun toward anyone, under any circumstances, and that even a blank could hurt or kill someone at close range.
While I can't recall the name of the man who came to our class that afternoon, his words are forever seared into my brain.
Every time I'm on set, I can still hear his voice in my head, stressing the importance of learning our angles of safety when a
When I began working on sets with weapons, I was a bit apprehensive
But my fears soon all but vanished, because safety protocols were always taken so seriously. Over the years, every set I have worked on has made safety a top priority and every protection has been afforded.
Even the time I had to do 12 takes of a scene where I was positioned in a car being pulled by a truck with its diesel fumes blasting me in the face - and being shot at by motorcyclists through a window, with tempered glass breaking in front of me - I felt safe. That says a lot.
On a personal level, I've never owned a gun or even considered owning one. But professionally, it's a different story. My characters have wrestled gun-in-hand, fired guns, and been shot. One producer even told me I die very well.
Yet despite all of this, I've never been required to take any sort of weapons-safety training class by any studio I've worked with. Throughout my career, like most actors, I've simply trusted the process, placing my faith in the hands of the professionals whose job it is to keep us safe.
This tragedy has taught me it's no longer simply about trusting the system
The same way I've learned to advocate for myself over the years -everything from being treated with respect to receiving meals and transportation - I now have to advocate myself to ensure safety protocols are in place. This means asking to see the gun being used in advance while double or even triple checking its chambers along with the dummies and blanks.
Like all industries, in order to move things along, we ask people to trust one another for the role they were hired to do. When I show up on the set, my job is to give the best performance I can and I expect others to do the same.
But trusting people to do a good job with hair and makeup or costumes and lighting is very different from putting your life in someone's hands.
I keep asking myself how something as terrible as this could have happened, because it's the opposite experience of everything I've ever known. How could the protocol system have been so broken on the set to the point that somebody was killed?
It's going to be a bit scary the next time I set foot on a set with firearms. I just pray what happened in New Mexico is not simply viewed as an isolated accident, but a serious systemic breakdown in current safety protocols - and that labor issues are addressed to ensure everyone's safety moving forward.