Alec Baldwin has been captured on camera hitting the phone of a protester who approached him inside a New York coffee shop.
The video footage was later shared on social media and was filmed for an anti-fascist show called Crackhead Barney & Friends. In the clip, the person behind the camera repeatedly asks the actor to say “free Palestine”.
Instead, a visibly annoyed Baldwin asks a staff member to call police and refuses to respond amid the protester’s repeated demands, which included “F*** Israel, f**** Zionism, please say it”.
She also referenced the Rust movie set shooting, for which Baldwin is facing criminal charges. “Why did you kill that lady? You killed that lady and got no jail time.”
She continued to shout, “Alec, can you please say free Palestine one time. Free Palestine, Alec, just one time and I’ll leave you alone. I’ll leave you alone, I swear, just say free Palestine one time.”
A staff member tried to defuse the situation, before Baldwin walked to the door of the coffee shop and asked the protester to leave. “Can you do me one quick favour,” he said, before hitting out at her phone, knocking it out of her hand.
The Daily Mail has approached Baldwin’s representatives for comment on the incident.
The actor’s criminal trial for the Rust film set shooting will start on July 10, after a grand jury indicted him for involuntary manslaughter in January this year.
Baldwin, 66, has pleaded not guilty to the charge. His defence lawyers are calling on the judge to dismiss the indictment against him and have accused prosecutors of “unfairly stacking the deck” against him, AP reports.
In March, armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who worked on the set of Rust, was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment after being found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. She is the first crew member to be convicted over director of photography’s Halyna Hutchins’ death.
In a public filing released this month, it was claimed that Baldwin had been “inattentive” during firearms training amid filming and was frequently heard “screaming and cursing” during production before the shooting took place.
He pleaded not guilty on January 31 and will face trial in July.