Alec Baldwin is the actor with whom John Kiriakou recounts a bitter and unresolved feud — “Alec Baldwin and I hate each other,” he says, “and hate each other to the point where we can’t be in the same room together.”[1]
The lunch
An Academy Award–winning screenwriter, a friend of Kiriakou’s, wanted to build an off-Broadway play around Kiriakou’s case and the events leading up to his trial, with Baldwin interested in playing him. The three met for lunch in New York, at a small place on the West Side, after Kiriakou took the train up.[1][2][3]
The friend prompted Kiriakou through the stories — the Kuwait material from his book, and others — while Baldwin sat listening without a word. About thirty minutes in, Kiriakou offered to take questions, and Baldwin’s answer was “I think you’re full of shit … I think you’re just making all this shit up.”[3][4][5]
Kiriakou’s reply is the line he repeats in both tellings: “I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but liar is not one of them.” The exchange ended in mutual curses; he got up and walked out, so angry that he walked the whole way back to the station and took the train home while his friend called after them both to stop.[4][5][6]
The AMC series
Six months or so later Kiriakou had written a pilot. He describes the screenwriting as a hobby he has kept up for years — seven pilots written in fourteen years, all seven sold, one of which made it to pilot stage.[6]
He and his friend pitched it at Fox, which passed: moderately interesting, not for us — with the note that having somebody important attached might make it more palatable.[7][8] With AMC next on the list, the friend said a sale could be guaranteed with an A-list star attached. Kiriakou’s response was “don’t even say it.”[9][7]
They called Baldwin on speaker from a breakout room at Soho House. Baldwin’s opening was “what’s that fuck want?”, to which Kiriakou answered “yeah, nice to talk to you again too, Alec.” He pitched the idea anyway, and Baldwin’s verdict was “actually, that is a pretty good idea. Go ahead and attach me.”[9][10] Baldwin joined the AMC meeting by video, AMC took it, and in one telling the sale closed the very next day.[11][10]
Then nothing. Weeks passed with no word from AMC’s business affairs office; when Kiriakou finally chased it, his attorney — who had forgotten about it — called over and was told the network had walked away from the project, because Baldwin had quit to take a deal at HBO, playing a CIA director.[12][13]
Kiriakou called him. The objection was not the departure but the silence — “you didn’t even have the couth to call and say ‘I’m going to drop out?’” — and the call ended as the lunch had, with “fuck you” from both sides and a hang-up. They have not spoken since.[14][13]
After the Rust shooting
When Baldwin was arrested over the shooting on the set of Rust, the same mutual friend called Kiriakou to say it would probably mean a lot if he rang Baldwin and walked him through what was coming. Kiriakou refused, in terms that vary in heat but not in substance between tellings: “Fuck him. I hope he rots in prison” in one, and in the other “He killed that woman. Somebody’s got to pay for this. Even if it was an accident, the buck has to stop somewhere.”[15][16] Asked afterwards how Baldwin was doing, his answer was simply that he understood he was doing better.[14]