Hilaria Baldwin, social media influencer, fitness guru, and wife of actor Alec Baldwin, is caught in the crosshairs of some high-octane drama unfolding on social media regarding her Spanish accent. Netizens are hot on the 36-year-old's trail, accusing her of "impersonating" a Spanish person for years after a Twitter user pointed out alleged discrepancies in her accent. Many slammed her for being a white woman "pretending" to be Spanish. As accusations against her mounted, the yoga instructor took to Instagram to clear the air around her background, saying she takes questions around her "identity and culture" very seriously.
In a video that clocks in at over seven minutes, Baldwin hit back at naysayers whose claims had by then gone viral. She admitted that though her real name was Hillary and she was born not in Spain (as is widely understood) but in Boston, she had spent a considerable amount of time in Spain and was thus proud of her multicultural heritage.
"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," Baldwin wrote.
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Source: Hilaria Baldwin / Instagram
What Hilaria Baldwin Said In Her Video
Defending her accent, Baldwin was heard saying in her IGTV, "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."
She went on to say that her family was happy speaking in both languages, and that, in fact, she is now even trying to raise their five kids bilingual. "In this country I would use the name Hillary. In Spain, I would use the name Hilaria. I identify more as Hilaria because that’s what my family calls me," she said.
Ireland Baldwin, the 25-year-old daughter of Alec Baldwin with former wife Kim Basinger, also came to her stepmother's defence, calling the allegations against her "pathetic." She was quoted saying in her Instagram stories, "It's so pathetic that anyone would wanna play detective, and dig that deep into someone's life that they don't know, don't know anything about, how they were raised..."
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What Are The Accusations Against Hilaria Baldwin?
Talk around Baldwin's seemingly "put-on" accent emerged over the weekend. After Twitter user @lenibriscoe reportedly pointed out Baldwin's conflicting accents writing - "You have to admire Hilaria Baldwin's commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person" - several began responding to the tweet with observations of their own. Some said that while the fitness guru used an American accent on Instagram, she has previously been heard using a Spanish accent in interviews.
According to NZ Herald, many claiming to be Baldwin's friends also responded to the now-private tweet which initially went viral. One commented, "I went to high school with her. She was perfectly nice and serious about ballroom dancing. Her name was indeed Hilary Hayward-Thomas and she did not have her current accent."
Another wrote, "I went to high school with her. Genuinely lovely person, I recall, but fully a white girl from Cambridge."
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Page Six suggests that discrepancies in Baldwin's Spanish-American heritage stem from her own profiles. The bio in her agency's speakers site apparently mentions that Baldwin was born in Mallorca, Spain. Further, several previous interviews have also quoted her as hailing from Spain.
It has also not gone missed on social media how Baldwin apparently once on a cooking show had forgotten the name of "cucumber."
Here are some social media reactions to the incident:
Image Credit: NY Daily News
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