Jon Gosselin, who was part of TLC’s lineup from 2007 to 2010, offered advice to Alec Baldwin ahead of the actor’s new reality show on the network.
Drawing from his experience, Jon Gosselin candidly cautioned Alec and his wife Hilaria about filming their large family for television.
Jon Gosselin starred in Jon & Kate Plus 8 with his then-wife, Kate Gosselin, and their eight children, while Alec whose Rust manslaughter case was dismissed and Hilaria are now spotlighting their seven children.
‘I’d say, “Don’t do it,” Only because you’ve already made it, you’re an amazing like award-winning actor,'” Jon explained of what he might say to Alec, per his interview with ET on Monday.
‘I did it for the money in the beginning ’cause I didn’t know how I was gonna support my family,’ he added of his reality show resume. ‘I sometimes have regrets because they [the kids] didn’t sign a contract, I signed the contract.’
He added: ‘Look at the nuclear fallout that happened [to our family]’
In the past, Jon and some of his children have discussed how they feel the show contributed to the breakdown of their family and a lasting estrangement.
Jon and Kate have twins, Mady and Cara, aged 23, and sextuplets: Alexis, Aaden, Hannah, Collin, Leah, and Joel, all aged 20.
While Hannah and Collin have distanced themselves from their mother publicly, the other six children maintain a close relationship with Kate,
‘I feel like [the fallout] was more on the network side and being taken advantage of versus the decisions we made because we feel like they forced us into those decisions,’ added Jon.
Last month, Alec and Hilaria announced the TLC show, which will is being billed as a peek into their home life alongside their seven children: Carmen, 10, Rafael, eight, Leonardo, seven, Romeo, six, Eduardo, three, Maria, three, and Iliaria, 20 months.
The couple ‘open up their lives for the first time and bring everyone in to join in the non-stop love, laughter and drama,’ per a press release.
In October 2021, Baldwin was rehearsing a cross-draw maneuver with the revolver when the gun went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.
Baldwin has pleaded not guilty and claims the gun accidentally fired after he pointed it toward Hutchins and pulled back the hammer, when it fired.
Last week, the judge in Santa Fe, New Mexico dismissed the case, saying the prosecution made errors in handling certain bullets that were regarded as evidence, and argued that the mistakes ‘impacted the fundamental fairness of the case.’
He added: ‘Look at the nuclear fallout that happened [to our family]’
Prosecutors have argued that a state workplace safety investigation, which found serious violations on set, was incomplete, untrustworthy and should be prohibited from the trial.
In April of this year, Hannah Guttierez-Reed, the armorer on set, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Hutchins’s death and sentenced to 18 months.
The night before the incident, six members of the camera crew quit because of their concerns over safety.
The jury heard that Baldwin commissioned director Souza to write the script, which he owned the rights to. Baldwin was the lead actor on the movie and was also a producer.
The court heard that Baldwin himself made the set unsafe by waving his gun like a ‘pointing stick’ at people.
The FBI conducted an accidental discharge test on the gun by striking it from several angles with a rawhide mallet, eventually breaking the gun.
Baldwin has twice been charged in Hutchins’s death. Prosecutors dismissed an earlier charge, then refiled it after receiving a new analysis of the revolver that Baldwin pointed at Hutchins.
Since the 2021 shooting, the filming of Rust resumed but moved to Montana under an agreement with Hutchins’s husband, Matthew Hutchins, which made him an executive producer.
The completed movie has not yet been released for public viewing.