hilaria baldwin memes

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Hilaria Baldwin responds to allegations that she faked Spanish heritage amid meme backlash

Baldwin addressed her accent and admitted she was born in Boston.

 

Audra Schroeder

Internet Culture

Posted on Dec 28, 2020

Hilaria Baldwin, wife of Alec, has responded to allegations that she’s been impersonating a Spanish woman for the past decade.

The saga started last week, with a thread from @lenibriscoe, who alleged that Baldwin is deep in a “decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person.” The thread supports its claims with videos of Baldwin switching between an American accent and something vaguely Spanish; research on her family history showing she (and her parents) were born in the U.S., though her bios still indicate she was born in Mallorca, Spain; and comment from alleged acquaintances who know her from Boston as Hillary Hayward-Thomas, the name that appears on an old Myspace account.

On Sunday, Hilaria, who married Alec Baldwin in 2012, responded to the allegations in two videos, stating that she was born in Boston, not Spain; that her accent comes from living in both Spain and the U.S.; and that her “mixing” the two comes from insecurity. She also said she’s told interviewers that she’s from Boston, but they all seem to write that she’s from Spain for some reason. (Her parents reportedly do live in Spain, but only since 2011.)

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CJTiwHiDX7X/?utm_source=ig_embed

Alec Baldwin responded as well, in a rambling eight-minute video, calling Twitter a “vast orchard of crap” and denying the allegations. As the Daily Beast pointed out, the first person to call out Hilaria’s ruse on Twitter back in 2012 was Genevieve Sabourin, the woman charged with stalking him.

It’s a lot to unpack, but the memes offer a little more context for this truly wild story. People also pointed out that Baldwin’s 30 Rock character falls for a woman putting on an English accent (Emily Mortimer), one with an over-the-top Boston accent (Julianne Moore), and that Salma Hayek’s character is portrayed as Puerto Rican.

While this story is a little different than, say, a white professor pretending to be a Black woman, Baldwin still benefited from her grift in problematic ways, landing profiles in ¡Hola! and Latina, despite not being Latina.


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*First Published: Dec 28, 2020, 11:56 am CST