Hilaria Baldwin, wife of actor and vocal Trump hater Alec Baldwin, responded Sunday to questions concerning her Spanish culture and apparently fluctuating Spanish accent.
“I’ve seen chatter online questioning my identity and culture,” the 36-year-old posted to Instagram on Sunday. “This is something I take very seriously, and for those who are asking— I’ll reiterate my story, as I’ve done many times before. I was born in Boston and grew up spending time with my family between Massachusetts and Spain. My parents and sibling live in Spain and I chose to live here, in the USA. We celebrate both cultures in our home—Alec and I are raising our children bilingual, just as I was raised. This is very important to me. I understand that my story is a little different, but it is mine, and I’m very proud of it.”
Hilaria was responded to a viral Twitter thread posted last week that accused the mother of impersonating “a Spanish person,” according to Fox News.
“You have to admire Hilaria Baldwin’s commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person,” the first tweet reads. A string of tweets from the user, @lenibriscoe, show videos of Hilaria with a more pronounced Spanish accent in two videos, and a video where the accent is not detectable. For example, in one video, Hilaria asks how to say the word “cucumber” in English. In another post, @lenibriscoe published a screenshot of an apparent review of Hilaria’s podcast, reading, “I know Hilary Hayward-Thomas from the Cambridge School of Weston in MA. She didn’t have an accent then and didn’t change her name to Hilaria. Because she’s not Spanish! So please stop using an accent in this podcast and interrupting your guests.”
Here she is pretending not to know how to say cucumber in English 😭 pic.twitter.com/g8xYNktsNY
— elena ilana alana alina elana (not) (@lenibriscoe) December 21, 2020
From a review of her podcast. This woman also claimed to have moved to the United States because she wanted to go to NYU 😭. pic.twitter.com/zuEWMNkTBT
— elena ilana alana alina elana (not) (@lenibriscoe) December 21, 2020
In another Instagram video posted Sunday, Hilaria reiterated that she was born in Boston but spent a lot time in Spain during her childhood, noting that her immediate family lives in Spain currently. She also emphasized that she’s never claimed that her mother was Spanish, noting that she’s “a big mix of so many different things.”
Hilaria also said that it was “frustrating” trying to understand why “it [can’t] be” that she “has two cultures,” American and Spanish. “Because that is my story,” she said. “And I think that’s like a really great thing.”
“I’m not gonna apologize for the fact of having two versions of my name, which is the same name,” the yoga/wellness expert said, ” … it’s the same name just some letters different. This is not somebody trying to pretend to be something else; it’s literally just, you have two cultures. … That’s my life experience, and I don’t have to apologize for my life experience.”
Addressing her accent, Hilaria said, “I am that person, if I’ve been speaking a lot of Spanish, I tend to mix them or if I’m speaking a lot of English I mix that, it’s one of those things I’ve always been a bit insecure about.”
“Hilaria Baldwin has claimed she was born in Mallorca, Spain, and raised in Boston,” Fox News reported. “She explained on a podcast in April 2020, ‘I moved here [to America] when I was 19 to go to NYU from… my family lives in Spain, they live in Mallorca.’ The bilingual mother of five’s accent has also noticeably fluctuated over the years when she made appearances on TV.”
Her CAA speaker page, Wikipedia and IMDb page, Fox News added, “all list her birth country as Spain. But Twitter users soon pointed out that her real name is Hillary Hayword-Thomas and she grew up in America.”