Producer Dana Brunetti is publicly calling out Alec Baldwin for claiming that he did not know actress Nikki Reed was underage while filming the 2006 indie movie, Mini’s First Time.
In the film, Reed, then just 16, portrays a high school senior who decides to become a sex worker. When one of her first clients ends up being her stepfather, played by Baldwin, the two begin an affair.
“I was forty-seven, and it never occurred to me to ask how old Nikki Reed was,” Baldwin writes in his memoir Nevertheless. “When I found out, just as we finished, that she was seventeen, I flipped out on the producers, who had told me something different.”
Brunetti, who produced the movie alongside Kevin Spacey and Evan Astrowsky, didn’t appreciate the accusation. He fired off a series of eleven tweets Tuesday accusing Baldwin of lying about the anecdote.
Not only does Brunetti charge that the actor was aware that Reed was underage—but that it was actually seen as something positive, as being underage meant there would not be any pressure to film nude scenes.
A fuming Brunetti didn’t leave it there, going on to tell The Hollywood Reporter: “It’s a lie…I read it and was like, ‘What the f—. Of course he totally knew how old she was. That’s why there’s no nudity in the movie. He knew before we even cast the movie. I think he’s been method acting Trump too much and he doesn’t know the difference between fake news anymore.”
The film’s writer and director Nick Guthe backed up Brunetti, telling THR Baldwin certainly knew Reed’s age.
“We all knew she was 16. When we discussed it at first, it was a question of meeting with her and making sure she was mature enough to handle the role,” Guthe said. “On the set, Nikki, being 16, would often speak quickly the way teenagers do, and Alec asked me about that at times because he had trouble understanding her, and I would remind him, ‘She’s 16.’”
Read more of the Hollywood Reporter account.
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