Picking an impartial jury to hear the trial of Alec Baldwin, a movie and television star who inspires strong feelings from both his fans and his detractors, is a particular challenge. So as jury selection began on Tuesday, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer started things off by turning a standard question on its head.

“How many of you have not seen or heard anything about this case from any source whatsoever?” she asked a pool of 70 potential jurors.

Only a couple indicated that they had not.

“I don’t have cable or internet or anything like that,” one outlier noted.

The case, as a vast majority of prospective jurors had heard, involves the shooting death of the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the film “Rust” in 2021. She was killed when a gun that Mr. Baldwin, one of the film’s stars, was rehearsing with fired a live round. The prosecution argues that Mr. Baldwin, 66, was criminally negligent, and he was charged with involuntary manslaughter. He has denied responsibility, saying that he had no reason to believe that a gun on a film set would be loaded with a live round, and that he had been told the gun was “cold,” meaning it should have been impossible to fire.

The potential jurors were asked about their feelings on guns (many owned them, while one declared, “I hate them”), whether they had connections to the film industry or whether there was anything that would make it difficult for them to serve on the jury (one woman brought up her daily medical marijuana use as a potential factor).

Alex Spiro, a defense lawyer, sought to gauge how potential jurors view Mr. Baldwin. “Maybe he played a role in a movie you didn’t like, maybe he did a comedy routine or an imitation you don’t like,” he said, possibly alluding to Mr. Baldwin’s impressions of former President Donald J. Trump on “Saturday Night Live.” He asked, “Does anyone have a view that would cause you to lean against him in some way?”