The Hilaria Baldwin Accent Controversy, Explained

Hilaria Baldwin found herself in the middle of a somewhat bizarre controversy in the final days of December 2020.

As a Twitter user once noted, “Each day on Twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it.” The yoga instructor and wife of actor Alec Baldwin knows this firsthand. However, the reason Hilaria went viral had nothing to do with her fitness posts or a quasi-feud with Amy Schumer. Instead, the public began to dig into Hilaria’s background and supposed Spanish heritage after a Twitter thread suggested she’d been faking an accent for “decades.”

Here’s how one woman’s accent became a major news story…

It started with a receipt-filled Twitter thread.

On December 21, Twitter user @lenibriscoe tweeted out the thread that started it all. “You have to admire Hilaria Baldwin’s commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person,” she began.

In a series of replies, the user lays out a compelling case, including videos, articles, and documents that cumulatively show Hilaria, whose birth name is Hillary Hayward-Thomas, speaking with an off-and-on Spanish accent.

The thread also included responses from people who claimed to have known Hilaria while growing up, but most of what was posted either came from Hilaria herself speaking in videos or from third-party articles written about her or her family.

Though Hilaria had described herself in one podcast as moving to the U.S. at 19 to go to New York University, CNN notes that her talent management bio claims she was born in Mallorca, Spain.

Her mother, Kathryn Hayward, attended medical school in Boston before working as an internist at Massachusetts General Hospital and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, according to Page Six. Hayward and her husband, David Thomas, reportedly didn’t move to Spain to retire until 2011, when Hilaria would have been 27 years old.

Over the next few days, finding information on Hilaria became something of an online treasure hunt. The conversation was less about Hilaria’s heritage—though that was a part of it—and more about the fun of catching a celebrity in a lie. Lots of people exaggerate online, but most don’t pretend not to know the English word for “cucumber,” as Hilaria did on one cooking show.

As major outlets started reporting on the story, the “scandal” became the internet’s weekend distraction.

Then Hilaria (Hillary?) responded.

In fact, on Sunday, December 27, three Baldwins took to Instagram to address the story. In a seven-minute video, Hilaria confirmed that she was born in Boston but raised in both the U.S. and Spain. She says that her family lives in Spain and that her accent comes from speaking both English and Spanish growing up.

“I am that person that if I’ve been speaking a lot of Spanish, I tend to mix them, and if I’m speaking a lot of English, then I mix that,” Hilaria said of her accent. “When I try to work, I try to enunciate a little more, but if I get nervous or upset or something, then I start to mix the two.”

She continued, “I try to speak more clearly in each language…but sometimes I mess it up, and it’s not something that I’m playing at, so I want that to be very, very, very clear.”

In a second response, Hilaria insisted that she spent much of her life in Spain. “I was moving around a lot, but I came here when I was 19 years old to go to college,” she said.

Other members of Hilaria’s family have weighed in.

Her husband Alec’s eight-minute video touched on a number of topics, like the utility of social media and Jeffrey Epstein. “There’s things that have been said lately about people I love, people I care about, which are ridiculous. Consider the source,” he said, seemingly in reference to Twitter, though the “sources” quoted online include Hilaria’s own statements.

Ireland Basinger Baldwin, Alec’s adult daughter with ex-wife Kim Basinger, addressed the drama on Instagram Stories, telling the camera, “I just wanted to say a couple of things, if you’ll allow me.”

The 25-year-old model asked the public to “stop sending” her “this stupid-ass thread” about her stepmother. “It’s so pathetic that anyone would want to play detective and dig that deep into someone’s life that they don’t know, don’t know anything about,” she continued, adding that the holidays this year have been hard for many people, herself included. “The last thing we really need to do is start shit and gossip about something that is just so, so stupid.”

She noted that even in the “dug-up” tweets from Hilaria’s old schoolmates, everyone remembers her as “really kind,” and says “that’s because she is very kind. She’s a good person.”

She also added a post to her grid on December 29, 2020:

Twitter, of course, had thoughts on these responses.

A number of comedians recorded their own version of Hilaria’s response, while Alec’s monologue got clipped into one-sentence soundbites to make memes from.

Hilaria sat down with The New York Times to explain herself.

In an 80-minute New York Times interview conducted December 29 and published December 30, Hilaria reiterated the points she made in her Instagram video, reiterating many statements from her Instagrams. “I feel like I have spent 10 years sharing [my] story over and over again. And now it seems like it’s not enough,” she said, calling the scandal “very surreal.”

“There is not something I’m doing wrong,” she emphasized, asking, “Where is the smoking gun?” She continued, “My intentions are I’m living my life and my life is created by my parents, my different experiences, my languages, my culture.”

She and her husband both attribute the brouhaha to internet culture, with Hilaria saying that “people don’t have the attention span” to understand her being raised in two cultures. If you were wondering, she attributed the cucumber moment to a “brain fart,” saying she was nervous during her first live television appearance. She also denied responsibility for her Creative Arts Agency bio. “I rarely at all work with C.A.A. now,” she said. “It was very disappointing.” (A spokesman for C.A.A. declined to comment to the Times.)

In the interview, Hilaria responded to accusations of cultural appropriation by asking, “Who is to say what you’re allowed to absorb and not absorb growing up?” (she claims her family brought Spanish culture into their home even when living in Boston) and stating, “This has been a part of my whole life, and I can’t make it go away just because some people don’t understand it.

“There is a reason this conversation is happening right now…. These are important conversations to have,” she continued. “But as people are able to come out as different parts of themselves and how they identify and have people listen, I think that’s extremely important.”

Hilaria also confirmed that she will continue to bring her and Alec Baldwin’s kids up with both cultures. “I send them to a bilingual school where they have Spanish in school, and I speak to them in Spanish at home,” she said. As for their names (Leonardo, Carmen Gabriela, Rafael Thomas, Romeo Alejandro, Eduardo Pau), she explained, “My kids do have very Spanish-influenced names…. Their names are after people who were important to me; they’re not names that we pulled out of a hat…. We were very thoughtful about it.”

Billy Baldwin and Chynna Phillips voiced their support.

Billy Baldwin, brother of Alec and father of Hailey, and his wife, Chynna Phillips, of music group Wilson Phillips, spoke to Page Six over the holidays about the controversy. Billy said, “This is probably an awkward and embarrassing time for Alec and Hilaria…. I’ve been texting Alec the whole time to make sure he’s OK and if he needs anything.” Phillips added, “My family has been through this before. I was born in a fishbowl, and this kind of stuff has been happening around me since 1968.” Phillips addressed the scandal again on YouTube, saying, “I feel terrible. Who’s going to throw the first stone at my sweet sister-in-law? She’s a good woman and you know none of us are perfect. We all have issues.”

Hilaria’s partnership with a baby-care brand ended.

Diaper brand Cuties Baby Care has ended its partnership with Hilaria, telling Page Six in a statement, “In response to the inquires we have received, we would like to inform all of our loyal Cuties followers that Hilaria’s partnership with Cuties Baby Care ended at the end of 2020. We thank Hilaria for the support she provided in 2020 and wish her, and her family, continued health and happiness in the New Year.” Another statement added, “The agreement expired at the end of December after all contractual obligations were filled.”

This post will continue to be updated if more information comes to light.

Originally Appeared on Glamour