I was slightly surprised to see the mental hoops some people were trying to jump to make Hilaria Baldwin’s story less offensive and less crazy. From all of the evidence we’ve seen, Hilaria grew up as a wealthy, privileged American woman in Boston, in a family with a long history in America. Her family took some vacations in Spain during her childhood, then when her parents retired from their work in Boston, they moved to Spain for their retirement years. That was the jumping off point for Hillary to change her name to Hilaria and create this bizarre persona as someone who was born and raised in Spain, who came to Massachusetts at 19 years old, and whose first language was Spanish. She faked a come-and-go thick Spanish accent and built an entire persona as a Spanish immigrant yoga studio owner, Instagram influencer and celebrity wife.
As for the celebrity she married, Alec Baldwin tried to come to his wife’s defense at the same time she was trying to “clarify” her actual backstory. Here’s the long-ass Instagram Alec posted:
I’m sorry, but this is more bonkers than Hilaria’s clarification video. Alec says in part, “You have to consider the source. We live in a world now where we’re hidden behind the anonymity of social media, people feel that they can say anything.” For the record, it’s not like someone on Twitter was like “Hey Hilaria Baldwin has been lying for years, blah.” The start of this was a thread full of evidence, including videos of Hilaria’s crazy accent work, screencaps of all of the lies she’s told in print media and videos of her ever-changing backstory in interviews. “Consider the source” is not an argument because the primary source is Hillary Thomas, the bonkers Bostonian who pretended to be Spanish.
Considering pic.twitter.com/BB68DhZylf
— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) December 27, 2020
And if this wasn’t enough to disregard Alec, his next IG post was a repost from Robert Kennedy Jr and it was an anti-Vaxx screed.
So, yeah, there are a lot of questions about what – if anything – Alec knew about Hilaria’s whole fake Spanish act. My guess is that he was taken in by Hilaria’s con at the start of their relationship, but as they spent more time together, he probably caught on to her fakery. Maybe he believed her sh-tty excuses for a time before he started to put it together. But let’s be real: most people don’t want to believe that they’ve been conned by their intimate partner. And clearly, Alec is still in denial, at least publicly.
Last thing: after Hilaria posted her clarification video – a video in which she swore she would take a break from social media for a time – she spent the next day posting stuff on IG and IG Stories. If you ask me, Hillary and Alec deserve each other and they’re equally crazy.
Photos courtesy of WENN, Avalon Red.
That was my first reaction, SHE is the source! She’s been hiding it in plain sight all this time.
They absolutely deserve each other, I just hope their children grow into decent human beings.
Didn’t Jack date Phoebe, the British Christie’s art dealer who was actually just a plain American gold digger on 30 Rock? Guess that was a warm up for this.
I think that whole storyline was Tina Fey knowing what was going on. Alec is a hothead & imagine the rant that went on behind closed doors when he realized his Spanish Infanta was really from Beantown.
I know I’m going completely OT here, but wasn’t his preacher character on Knots Landing (yes, I’m an old as Michael K would say) a duplicitous nut? Hmmm?!
Snappy, that storyline took place in season 1 (around 2006, 2007) several years before Alec met and started dating Hilaria.
Which to me, makes it even funnier he then fell for it in real life too!
She admitted it! She admitted she was born in Boston. She admitted that Spanish wasn’t her “first language” but that she was raised bilingual. She admitted she came to New York, not America, for the first time when she was 19. She admitted she’s a “white girl” with many different heritages/origin countries in her, and is not actually 100% (or any part?) Spanish. So…. why is he trying to make it seem like she WASN’T caught in a lie. She is trying to make it seem like she was caught in a lie/misunderstanding that snowballed but it’s all so understandable because she was raised “in the Spanish culture” and likes to visit Spain so that means she’s as Spanish as any Spanish person.
Oh and also, yesterday we kept having discussions about where some commenters said she was trying to be less white and then others would say Spanish people are white. I’m wondering if this is an American vs European thing. Americans seem to differentiate between white and Caucasian. This is not my personal view, but in America, “white” equals WASP: white, Anglo Saxon Protestant. Can you even be “white” if you’re Catholic or Greek or Russian Orthodox or Jewish? Some Americans consider white to be the UK (maybe excluding Ireland), Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden, Finland, Norway. Basically North Western Europe. Italians, Spaniards, and possibly even the French are “Latin,” which is “not AS white.” Greeks, Sicilians, Turks, Caucasian North Africans are “swarthy.” Even Eastern Europeans aren’t “quite white.” All of these people are Caucasian, but they’re something other than just “white.” This is also why some Americans have a very hard time accepting that Hispanic/Latino people can be considered white. And I do think a lot of people don’t even really think through the implications or whether this is offensive, it’s just how people in America have been categorized and thought of and spoken of for generations. It’s one of those insidious, internalized, implicit bias type things that people may not even realize they’re doing and have never really thought about.
I want to say again that I DO NOT personally believe this but it may account for the differences in what/who is “white” yesterday and why by claiming to be Spanish, Hillary was trying to be “less white.”
I believe the distinction is “white” vs “spicy white.”
Just speaking for myself as someone who has lived in Texas her whole life, I consider anything European as white. Including Spainish, Italian, and Greek.
When I say POC I am referring to indigenous people or people with indigenous heritage, Black people from various heritages, and Asian people with various heritages.
It’s interesting how differently people in America and Europe feel about this and I would bet it differs in the North States to the South States too.
@AmyToo, I think it depends on who you ask. For me, anyone from Europe is “white”. BUT I do know that even in Europe they differentiate between northers and southerners from their own country. The French, Italians and Greeks do this. I have seen this first hand. What is sad is that the darker features are not as admired as the lighter features. I think Hispanics and Latinos are not classified as white is because the Spaniards and Portuguese came to South America and many of the people now are a result from the colonists and indigenous people mixing.
Not sure that religion can be brought into the “white” question. I know many POCs that are Greek Orthodox or Catholic. That is a classification of religious beliefs.
Thanks for writing all of this out, Amy Too. Americans do tend to have an obsession with “percentages” and “degrees” of whiteness/otherness because of our long history with codified systemic racism and oppression based on race. And that’s part of what makes Hilaria’s lie so inherently problematic: she is American and shares the same cultural capital we all do, and at least some of her cosplay involved hair and skin darkening, so people are not wrong to think that — at least in part — she was also playing with American ideas about race and ethnicity. The bigger problem that I see, and that I shared on the other thread, is that her behavior is something white, typically wealthy, people are “allowed” to do easily and often while actual Brown and Black people are discriminated against, assaulted, and have been killed for having *real* accents, because they *actually* come from a place where English is not the first spoken language. Having an accent and being from a foreign country is not seen as unique and expansive and interesting for black and brown immigrant communities as a whole — for huge swaths of our racist, xenophobic country, it’s considered threatening and offensive. See: the entirety of the last four years.
But I also wanted to throw out the idea as well that “not all Europeans are white,” which not that many commenters noted, but it needs to said over and over again. Race is a social construct, for sure, and we see that super clearly in discussion threads like these that completely ignore the presence of non-white peoples in “white spaces,” such as whole continents that also have populations of non-white peoples.
Amy Too and Osito, your comments are giving me life. Women like Hilarious Dolezal give me a migraine, and the people who don’t understand why also give me a migraine.
@ Amy Too
I mentioned in the other thread in the wee hours of the morning that whiteness in America is a legal thing, which allows certain sectors of society to be treated as superior and keep others oppressed. So many immigrant communities have sued to be considered white and have taken it all the way to the Supreme Court, some with success (Italians, Irish), and others with failure (Indian, Japanese, African) because, according to our great SCOTUS, they don’t “look” white. People want to be part of the ruling, oppressive class in order to acquire and retain power by any means necessary and keep the oppressed classes/races incarcerated (forced indentured servitude) or struggling so that they have to constantly work and make the oppressors money during pandemics, for instance, while they get to luxuriate and take on fake accents and cultures in order to seem even slightly interesting or marginally/barely “exotic.”
I suppose I should have said “some Americans” and made it more clear that I didn’t mean all Americans. I’m an American and I don’t subscribe to this viewpoint but I know plenty who do, even without really thinking about it or realizing it. It’s just sort of ingrained that there are “degrees of whiteness” with the most white people being North European WASPS.
I was mostly trying to get across that while most Americans would consider anyone with European heritage from any of the countries in Europe to be Caucasian and thus “technically white,” there seems to be a scale of whiteness that some Americans think exists. So the “most white” would be the Northern European countries, and then as you go further South and East, those people are somehow “less white” or they’re white+ a qualifier. “Latin,” for example. “Olive-skinned,” “tan,” “swarthy,” “sallow.” You’ll see older novels that will throw in those qualifiers to differentiate between the technically white character and the “proper” lilies and roses white complexion. It’s just insidious. This ranking scale of whiteness.
And I still maintain that some of this is judged based on the majority religion of the country, with Protestant countries being the “most white” and Catholic, Greek/Russian Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim majority countries being “less white” because those other religions are “more exotic” and anything “exotic” can’t quite be white. Though I’m not sure if this is something that people actually know they’re doing or not. I was watching Downton Abbey the other day and one of the characters says something like “there’s just something very Johnny Foreigner about the Catholics, they don’t seem to be really British,” even though he was talking about white, English Catholics who had roots in England pre-dating the Reformation.
Sorry but I think this is much ado about nothing. How many celebs lie about their age, upbringing, etc.? Who cares? I’m latina and personally find this story mildly amusing but boring already. Let it go, people. Find something else to bitch about.
Being Latina made her more interesting on her eyes I guess.
Considering the many race debates I’ve seen on here, it seems incredibly racist to be saying that anything European is white. I’m a mixed race English person. I have light brown skin, I’m not white.
It’s true that here we are much less hung up on counting percentages and claiming distant herrigates. Spain, Italy, France, Germany… Europe in general is predominantly white but we have many other races in the mix, who can rightfully claim to be nationals of any of these countries. We might say we are half of something and half of something else. Occasionally you might meet someone who will go so far as to divide into quarters but rarely do people break it down more than that.
We also consider white to be white, whether thats white British, French, Spanish and so on. Mediteranian looks are a thing but you’re still white, just maybe with a tan and dark hair and eyes.
My children, if breaking it down technically are 1/4 black carribean, 1/4 white British and half white French and yet they’d consider themselves white British. Not to deny their ancestry. In fact they’d tell you about that if yo were interested. More that for simplicities sake, they look white and they grew up entirely in England.
I think this debate only highlights the difference between Americans and Europeans in terms of culture and race.
Long answer and I’m adding this late so most people won’t see it but until the 1980s or so, most Hispanics were *officially* considered white. It wasn’t added as a choice/ethnic designator on the US Census until around 1980. I forget all the details but there’s a very good–if dry–book, “Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American” that explains it. It was primarily meant to group together Spanish-speaking people from Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Cuba (the three largest groups at that time) but of course included people from Latin American countries. There’s been some scope shift over the years Some people include Brazilians under the umbrella title of “Hispanics” even though they speak Portuguese (others feel that while Hispanics are also Latinos/as/Latinx, Brazilians are Latinx but not Hispanics). Additionally, I think some people whose families emigrated from Spain began to self-identify as Hispanic. The term has become so pervasive that I read a tweet from someone in the UK who said that two younger colleagues, from Spain, self-identified as Hispanic.
Hispanic comes from the ancient name for Spain and all Spaniards identify as Hispanic but for them it’s a cultural and
historic term. Americans have made it a racial term but there is no Hispanic race. Spanish speakers are as diverse as English speakers who range from Australian aboriginals to native Americans to South Africans to White British.
@SMS Yes, I’m aware that the term Hispanic comes from Hispania, the Roman name for the Iberian peninsula. But I was providing some context or rather a resource that provides context as to how it’s very specific usage in the US. I would think that most Spanish people from Spain living in the UK or elsewhere in Europe would identify themselves as Spanish rather than Hispanic but what do I know.
“white” is how America treats anyone other than w/ obviously not white skin. Everyone else who is “treated white” but wants to NOT be seen as “basic” walks in the door proclaiming to be Jewish Greek Spanish Portuguese Native American Grandma etc
A little googling says at least her mother was at the wedding. No mention of the father in the People mag piece. This means Alec Baldwin has met her clearly American mother. Other wedding guests: Tina Fey, Lorne Michaels, Woody Allen and Soon Yi. They, too, probably met Hillary’s mother.
Some of the wedding service was conducted in … say it with me … Spanish.
I saw an interview of her mother saying the names of her kids & she absolutely stammers on ‘he he he Hilaria”. So I’m gonna guess Hillary begged her mom to get in on it. Plus her mom could be Spanish heritage. Some light skinned women w curly or “big” hair could pass for English 2nd language.
I sort of love this story, it’s great end-of-2020 gossip and I always enjoy when phonies get called out.
consider the “source”? social media the land of hilria’ss hilary? UGH. She posts lingerie photos w the caption, “I had a miscarriage” or whatever. So cloying & cringeNEss. REMEMBER PEEPS– he lied to Kim Basinger about being a vegetarian & wanting “the clean life”, but she caught him w cigars whiskey & prime rib, then he let his inner “dirty” fly hence the crazy divorce. I do love him as a comedian, but THEY DESERVE EACH OTHER
Didn’t Marlon Brando divorce a woman who claimed to be foreign, only that was elaborate lie? Possibly fueled by mental illness? This has to be excruciatingly embarrassing… what else, what next?
He also sent a woman to the Oscars on his behalf who he hired to pretend to be Native American when she literally wasn’t.
She wasn’t???
Her father is Native.
Sasheen Littlefeather, as I recall.
That’s not true. Her father is Apache and Yaqui Indian from Arizona.
She is White Mountain Apache and Yaqui on her father’s side. And French, German, and Dutch on her mother’s.
So, YES, she is considered Native.
Yes, his first wife. She was born Joan O’Callahan in India to an English father and Welsh mother. She changed her name to Anna Kashfi and ethnicity to Indian to further her modelling career. The marriage was short lived but they had a son together.
‘Tis a bit late for divorce- she birthed the entire cast of Dora the Explora. Where would the twenty of them go???
Someone yesterday said that Alec had unrequited love for Penelope Cruz and Hillary cottoned on to that with her fake Spanish bio/accent. IDK if it’s true, bit in all the pics in this post, I got Penelope Cruz vibes from her Hillary’s hair, clothes, and poses.
And Alec can GTFOH with his anti-vax nonsense. So can Kennedy.
Oh man…I don’t see Alec leaving her, but I totally believe Hillary cooked up a persona, life, and accent to trap him and he’s hearing about how he’s been fooled for the first time. I would not be surprised if his defense of her cools. Thus far, the tabloid press is reporting this as warring public opinion as opposed to this woman is an utter fake. I think she’d fess up and apologize if she felt she had no other viable choice to continue being in public life.
I mean, did Alec Baldwin never meet her family? They are transparently not Spanish.
I have a friend who knew her in the ballroom dancing scene when she decided to be a celebrity gold-digger (her words, apparently) and changed her name to sound more “exotic.” My friend told me about this YEARS ago, I assumed it was common knowledge because I don’t keep up with these people. It’s not new information at all and exactly the kind of pointless, hilarious scandal I wanted from 2020.
The Penelope cosplay is so creepy, honestly. And I don’t know if I’ll manage to express my thoughts clearly enough, but I find having 5 children in such a short time – with the whole pregnancy and “getting the body back” played out in social media repeatedly – to be a bit alarming, maybe a red flag. I don’t know if you can give each child the attention they deserve in such a warped environment.
I think they have been a bit irresponsible in this, or he’s been irresponsible and she’s been trying to fill a void in her soul – combined with the fake identity, it’s starting to look a bit sinister.
To clarify: I know there are happy families with lots of children, I’m not criticizing those, just this particular situation.
I agree. The churning out of children speaks to a larger problem with this women and her constant need for attention and publicity. She’s not a poor women from the 19th century with no access to birth control, she seems to have some kind of pathological need for babies.
Maybe she thinks as she is pretending to Spanish she has to pretend to be Catholic, and obvs, all Catholics have loads of children and don’t believe in birth control! She looks visibly Spanish or hispanic in a lot of pictures, so she has changed her appearance to make her look more Spanish or, even worse, darkened her skin from that of a European Spanish person so she looks Latina.
Dollycoa- I was starting to wonder that …if the baby-a-year was meant to create the image of a traditional Catholic woman … from 50 years ago. Man this story is weird.
My mother had five children in less than 7 years and IMO it’s impossible to give them all the attention they need. That must be why I only had two kids who were spaced apart.
@ RAPUNZEL-Penelope Cruz had multi-episode arc on 30 Rock where PC played a hot Latina home nurse & Jack was in lust with her.
That’s where Hilary got the idea?🙄
That was Salma Hayek.
@ LUCY 2-THANK YOU!!!!!! I am embarrassed and mortified. How dense can I be 😥😖
That was some bizzarro shiggidy right there – to both his videos. I would think an apology and lesson learned was in order, but no – this farce is taken further by defending it. I find it interesting that he, as a white male is defending his white female wife for her actions of impersonation of a minority. It’s like Lori Loughlin who tried to defend her actions. Be quiet and just sit down and acknowledge you are in the wrong.
I’m not gonna try to defend either of them, they deserve all the criticism they get, but she never pretended to be a minority. She pretended to be a white person from a European country.
There are videos of Alec quoting her, and he is using a Spanish accent. They were trading on the “sexy Latina” vibe. That is what people are shocked by: cultural appropriation. Not just the lying.
She pretended to be a Spanish speaking immigrant. In the USA, context for that is huge and it’s very problematic considering the public perception and treatment of Latinx migrants/immigrants in this country.
She traded off the perception that was this spicy, exotic Spanish speaker and reaped the benefits of fetishization and exotification.
Right, but the culture she was appropriating was European Spanish, not Latin American. Like I said, they deserve the criticism, but let’s not make up details that don’t exist.
She did though, she pretended to be Latina specifically in her relationship with Latina and Hola magazines.
Wait, isn’t an immigrant a minority in the US? Or do I have that wrong?
I am not making up details that do not exist. I speak from experience and my experience is that I am an American and a Latina. Many Americans can barely make the distinction that Spain is in Europe and that many Spaniards are white/not Latino. There’s a huge possibility that she was often regarded as or assumed to be a white Latina (she was featured on the largely problematic Latina magazine). It’s not like she was in Europe, the UK or AUS letting this con play out, where she may have gotten a different reception simply because they don’t have the history of LA migration and colonization that the US HAS. Again, context matters.
Here’s a video of her talking to her daughter about her darker skin after watching MLK…so yeah, she did pretend her spray tan made her a minority
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bs5xCIRFMC4/?igshid=12vdlbd8fx9sx
Seems a bit disingenuous to claim she was innocently pretending to just be European. She was transparently playing to exotic sexy stereotypes about Spanish-speaking women. And, she chose Spain because she gets to have it both ways. She’s comfortably European while still getting to play an exotic caricature.
I think that immigrants in America are minorities no matter where they come from. Minority does not have to equal POC, though POC are minorities in America. ESL speakers are also the minority in America. And then yeah, the specific context of how she was perceived in America as a Spanish speaking person with a Spanish sounding name, where many Americans lump all Spanish speaking people together and consider them Latinx immigrants seems like a way for her to play to being an “exotic” possibly Latinx, possibly non-white immigrant but then she could also point out “oh no, I’m actually a white European from Spain,” if she wanted to be “more acceptable.”
@HotSauceinmybag, IKR?!?!?
The thing is that Latinas are weighing in with their thoughts about her taking up the little space they have, whether or not white people think she did. Most Americans and Canadians have zero idea about Spain’s background and history. She cultivated a image that had her on the cover of Spanish language magazines and had her as a bilingual public speaker. She gaslit her own child by posting a video of her putting her spray tanned hand next to her kid’s white one and saying, “See? Is yours any better than mine?” and posted about how people thought she was the kids’ nanny because she was speaking Spanish to them and wasn’t blond or blue eyed. Instead of apologizing, she talks about how she’s not cookie cutter and contributes to diversity. And she says it all without irony.
@Sarah, also in that IG video I didn’t hear any accent? Methinks girlfriend has some issues.
@Jenn12, THANK YOU!! Thank you for understanding.
@Leducduswaz gonna disagree- grandparents both native Spanish speakers & were absolutely harassed in America in the 50s, called “spics” as in “spic english”? In business & at church, encouraged to change names “cuz it’s easier” from the beautiful Enrico & Aurellia to —Harry and Esther. Spanish accents are definitely treated as minorities in America.
I totally agree with you.
Not to mention that if her “confession” includes her saying, “I’m just a white girl” or whatever her exact words were, she’s implying that she was playing at being “not-white” previously.
I guess regular degular boring old whiteness just doesn’t have the cache’ it used to!
And her hella dark tans on top of her come and go accent and bs story tell a very different story than a simple “misunderstanding”.
Yeah, you don’t get that color in Massachusetts. Or that accent. You can certainly get that privilege and artifice though. What a poser.
“You don’t get that color in Massachusetts” is the quote of the day. Good one.
I know I shouldn’t but I kinda feel bad for him. They have four kids together! If you were in a happy and loving relationship with your spouse and had four young children and found out something like this what would you do? I like to think I’d divorce on the basis of creepiness…. but it’s all just so bizarre.
I know, I feel so bad for the kids.
They actually have 5 kids, the youngest is 3 months. I really don’t know what I would do in this situation but I’m definitely enjoying this hot mess being publicly exposed (apart from the effect this will have children).
This is fun gossip, yes. Alec and Hilary deserve each other, but for people like me, whose mom’s first language was Spanish with an accent beaten out of her by nuns in Catholic School in 1950s Los Ángeles, it pisses me off. I was taught English first so that I wouldn’t suffer in school. My mom wanted me to talk like the people on TV, so all of my relatives spoke to me in English when I was little.
Rachel Dolezal, that White professor who faked her ethnicity, Elizabeth Warren even, who I love… so many brown people in the United States are discriminated against because of it and these women wear “being brown”like a badge that they can pin to a blouse. Having an accent and being rich in the US aren’t mutually exclusive, but many people here who are of European descent want nothing to do with “dirty Mexicans”. Spanish speakers are all reduced to one race here, assumed to be part of the Spanish-speaking nation to our south. This dumb broad didn’t grow up with that. She’s ignorant of the pain she’s contributing to.
@christina
‘wearing brown like a badge of honor’ reminds me of blake lively
in a makeup ad some time ago, i think she referred to herself as native American if im remembering correctly?
@Christina, thanks. Some twitter posts say Hilary “isn’t” a Rachel Dolezal, but I disagree. Like dolezal, she took the “glamorized” version of an ethnicity. The version that is NOW accepted as beautiful/sexy/alluring/exotic. Those of us w/ actual mothers/grandmothers who had to work so hard to prove their worth despite the ugly slurs & treatment- Hilary is reaping the reward with none of the work. THAT’S why this is offensive. Did Dolezal dress Black & try to get a job as a cleaning woman in an old folk’s home? Did Hilaria fake her “spain-ness to work as a dishwasher? NO they both took on the privileged accepted version of stolen ethnicity- the ones who’s cleaning grandfathers sweat for to give their children the opportunity to have an empowered role in society- a fitness teacher, an activist/lecturer. So again- this is no joke, entertaining for their mess to come out YES, but a joke, NO.
Yeah, I’m kind of on the fence about him. Just because he’s an asshole doesn’t mean he deserved to be conned/lied to all these years by his wife & mother of their FIVE children. Now, if he knew and went along with it that’s a whole other thing and he deserves to be dragged & shamed as much as she does. It’s just all so bizarre. Somewhat entertaining, but still bizarre.
I kind of believe the theory that she used this to hook Alec but eventually he had to find out. I mean he has to have a team of people that vet who he is with? And I saw on the deux moi IG someone said that his team flagged Hilaria for being suspicious and he fired them, lol.
And I’m thinking about them getting married, all the paperwork for that, the pre-nup, him meeting her family? It all had to play out behind closed doors. I’m sure he had to have known SOMETHING.
I’m so bored with quarantine and I’ve been following this since Pajiba posted the viral Twitter thread that bought this to light on Dec. 23. Interested in how Hilaria decides to continue dealing with this PR nightmare lol
agreed. He has an army of children with her, what’s he gonna do at this point? His extremely contentious divorce and post-divorce relationship with Kim Basinger clearly affected his relationship with his oldest daughter, and no one would want that to happen with the younger kids. But when he knew is a big factor in that…..well, when he knew and when he accepted the truth. If he already caught feelings by the time he accepted the truth, again, what was he going to do?
But any anti vaxx garbage is just that, garbage. It is unacceptable and irresponsible of him to spread it. Shame on him.
You nailed it @hotsauce. There’s just no way he didn’t know between all the paperwork and living together for 10 years. He loved having a younger “Spanish” wife out of pure vanity and now they are both cornered. You love to see it.
Hotsauce, lol at him firing the vetting team! That is one (gold) tidbit I haven’t yet seen. I have been following this with glee for a number of days, too, purely for relief from the onslaught of stress and angst that has not just been 2020 but the whole Trump era. This story brings me back to the Celebitchy of yore.
It seems very true to form that he would double down on the nonsense. I think he’s in too deep, with five little kids.
@ESMOM and @Sarah, this is gossip escapism at its finest! We do love to see it!
How could he not know? He never met her clearly non-Spanish parents? He might have been tricked at first but not later!
@ hotsauce, of course she wasn’t trying to hook him, she didn’t have a tv and didn’t even know who he was! How could she have possibly been trying to trick him! /sarcasm
I think he knew. If he didn’t for sure leading up to the wedding he did. Wouldn’t he find it funny that the name on the certificate was “Hilary Thomas?” Maybe she spelled it like Tomas to make it authentic. Anyway, I don’t recall what her surname was before she took up with Baldwin. It wiki changed her profile to her original one.
Did he never meet her family prior to marrying her? From the story yesterday, it doesn’t sound like they’re on board with her farce. If he made any attempt to get to know her parents prior to marrying her, I’m sure he would have learned that she grew up in Boston.
Either way, I don’t feel bad for him.
Don’t feel sorry for him, it’s Alec f’ing Baldwin, a complete tool. If he wasn’t in on it, (1) he deserves it and (2) just watch the countdown to the release of some audio of him screaming at her abusively now that the bloom is off the rose.
I think he knew. I think he knew that she was an American woman raised in America who considered herself to be “raised bilingual” and “culturally Spanish.” And he thought that was just a weird, but kind of fun and probably sexy, eccentricity of hers. And if she wanted to claim to be Spanish, or let people think she was actually an ESL Spanish immigrant through lies of omission, that was fine with him because they could always just go with “she never SAID she was 100% Spanish and immigrated from Spain. She was raised ‘in two cultures’ and switches between them, and that’s fine!” I can see him, as the asshole he is, even finding it funny every time a journalist just assumed she was born in Spain and reprinted that lie without fact-checking it because it would make the journalists (not his wife, never his wife!) look bad or stupid or something.
Agree 💯
I agree as well. I heard her speak Spanish and she speaks it very well! I’m a dual national who spent all her summers there as a child and her Spanish is better than mine and certainly better than Gwyneth Paltrow. She obviously spent a lot of time there and identifies with the culture, as do her parents and brother. I’ve met many people who moved there and assimilated so if she wants to say she’s bicultural it doesn’t bother me.
All the weird racial and immigrant contracts people are putting on this says more about this country’s weird fixation with degrees of “whiteness” and the idea that all immigrants are poor. She said she came to NY or the USA to go to college – that’s hardly presenting herself as a needy immigrant.
SMS, in the United States, people are treated poorly if they speak with a Spanish accent, AND her CAA profile said that she was born in Majorca. It DOES speak to how horrible racism is here. And there is a ton of evidence that she works her brown cred regularly on her Instagram account. Someone who knew her in high school called her on it. AND her parents were high profile people in their town, so there is plenty of evidence from newspapers at the time that they have no Spanish blood. Alas, all of the lies are shaking out like leaves off of a tree.
This is such a hot mess and I am thoroughly enjoying it.
A hot mess of BS! It’s like a train wreck and it just keeps getting worse.
so am I. this is entirely of her own doing.
It’s the comic relief we all need to end this horrible year. Thank you, Hillaria and Alec.
It is, how you say…Hilarias! 🤣🥒
😂 @Sarah 😂😂😂
😂
It’s the gift that keeps giving!
Me too! In a year lacking in much celebrity gossip, this has been quite a holiday gift.
I don’t blame him for wanting to defend her, she’s his wife and they have a bazillion kids together, but they’ve gone about the whole thing so poorly, not to mention the pure craziness of faking a persona to begin with. I just don’t get it, how she thought she’d get away with it forever.
When did Alec Baldwin first find out that Hillary was faking her backstory? Why did he go along with this con?
Presumably he met her parents at some point? But then again he was already married to her when he appears in an interview mimicking his wife’s accent and apologizing that “My wife is Spanish I’m not being racist.” Like they were already married and she was faking an accent at home?
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Whenever I see her name I immediately think of hilarious. Hilaria = hilarious
glad it’s not just me. I always “say” it that way in my head.
I see her name and ALWAYS think “THIRSTY”. Not enough water in the WORLD to quench the thirst of *this* one!
“… people feel that they can say anything.” Esp. wealthy, privileged white people who can claim to be an immigrant, right Alec?
This isn’t some people going “I heard from a friend who’s neighbour’s cousin’s ex’s brother heard that Hillaria is pretending”, the source was Hillaria herself.
Anyways, RFK Jr is a notorious anti-vaxxer who’s own family have called him out and he himself has said he has no support in the Democratic Party. And that’s not even getting into him being a shitty husband. Jessica Biel is another one of his allies/friends/whatever you call it
Yeah, I recently found out about RFK Jr from one of my kids university parent FB pages. There’s a horrible contingent of Covid deniers and lately they have been citing him as a “legit” source of medical info. Anyone who tries to dispute the nonsense gets a comeback of “but he’s a Democrat, don’t you listen to your own?” It’s beyond exhausting.
He’s only a democrat due to the family. I’m sure if he could “switch” without massive family backlash, he absolutely would. Or even register as an independent like his cousin Maria Shriver has but I’m guessing he still wants to use the family’s democratic association to seem “legit”.
He tried to get a job in the Trump Administration (there’s even a pic of him, Trump and Pence floating around). Then he tried to make it a big deal to the point where the Trump Admin were like “uhhhhh this did not happen”.
Imagine the Trump Admin of all people calling you out for lying.
Pretty interesting, there is a reason rich folk move to Spain when they retire, it’s all about income taxes. Making her a perfect reflection of wealthy, white Americans, like Alec. But the most hilarious part is, she might be pretending to be Spanish, but European Spaniards are white, they are not indigenous people who were conquered and had all their valuables stolen. So she is a white lady, who speaks Spanish quite well! Honestly, you’d have to have a rich family to fall back on if your job was Yoga instructor and then Alec Baldwin’s wife.
Not just a job… she opened her own studio in Manhattan? Did she just get a bank loan using that pretty smile as a down payment?
I have a good friend, English, well to do…. He sold his home in Notting Hill and he moved to Spain for the same reason: taxes, and a much lower cost of living. He was able to buy a villa in the hills, with an ocean view, and live for a fraction of what it was costing him in London.
Lots of west coast retirees doing that in Mexico. Their social security checks go a lot farther.
Has anyone seen the IG where she talks about MLK with her daughter? If you have doubts about her level of appropriation – she literally holds her slightly tan hand next to her daughter’s as an example of the “brown skin” that isn’t any different than the white skin she pointed out on her daughter. I was appalled.
I am now convinced she is mentally unwell. I bet even her hair colour is fake.
Wow, that is next level. She definitely has some serious issues.
I agree about her hair, I think she’s dying it darker, and then putting bad highlights on top of that.
Wow. I’m gobsmacked. She’s a mess.
She also posted on IG about how she’s mistaken for her kids’ nanny because she “isn’t blond and blue eyed” and speaks Spanish with them. She then talks about how people ask to hire her because she speaks Spanish. She knows what image she’s putting out there. Not to mention as recently as yesterday she was referring to her white kid clan as the Baldwinitos.
Wow! That’s some Rachel dol..whatever her last name is…level shit!
Wow. She is doing brownface in plain sight and getting away with it. Slimebag.
I’m disgusted
YO. That IG video is CRAZY. AGAIN, she is not a great mom!!! This is totally nuts that she’s convinced her kids she is Spanish or “different” and used it to elicit sympathy. Her con has extended to her children.
I watched it as well. Her daughter seemed uncomfortable. I know I was.
Wow, what a mess. And to get her kids involved in that too.
I think the kids have token names as well…I mean…commitment.
Slight clarification: her parents aren’t retired in Spain. They’re “International Integrators.”
The fact that señor Alejandro Baldwin is defending his wife and saying that she is from Spain lool , they are made for each other.
Geez Angel, warn a woman first. I almost spit out my coffee laughing at Señor Alejandro Baldwin haha.
HAHAHA! Oh, pobre Alejandro…
I was astounded at the lengths some non-immigrants, white Europeans and generally white people went to to explain why Hilary’s con is not infuriating nor cultural appropriation.
When someone who has been mocked by their accent tells you why this hurts, and you still try to explain to them that “it’s not that bad nor racist” then what does that tell you about them?
I had to step away from this site because I was getting too emotional and angry at some people, at their audacity to diminish other people’s experiences just because they don’t match their privileged asses.
At the end of the day, Hilary brought to the surface a lot of social injustices that occur daily. She took every single prejudice POCs, latinos/as, and immigrants suffer daily, and used them to her advantage – to bag a rich, famous husband, to advance her yoga career, to be more INTERESTING.
Not to mention she is still referring to her family as the Baldwinitos. She is disgusting, and so are the people saying things like, “Oh, well, Spain colonized others, so she didn’t do anything wrong.” Like this idiot took time to figure out Spain’s past. She was just banking on not getting caught since her lies were based in a little truth.
There’s nothing wrong with appreciating a culture and language, and trying to immerse yourself in it. I know I’ve done it with one country in particular LOL But to erase her own nationality and ancestry? It seems pathological
@CEE I appreciated your comments in yesterday’s thread, they were authentic and informative. They gave me a new perspective on this story, and I’m truly thankful you took the time to write and share with us.
Thank you, Esme. I know I’ve grown a lot over the past years and it’s all thanks to the writers and commenters on this site. I’ve learned SO MUCH about the BLM movement, about police brutality, and about internalised racism. I can now offer people a different perspective when the riots or the killing of yet another African American make the news in my country. I’ve learned to listen to those telling their stories, especially when the issue at hand is about them and not me. Yesterday I felt unheard and it was disheartening.
So now he’s saying that she grew up in Spain. But her parents had practices in Boston and she went to school in Boston, so when did she live there? Spending summers there doesn’t equal growing up there. I spent the entirety of my summers in the UK, France, or Thailand from first grade to 10th, but I don’t tell people I lived or grew up in those countries.
Your labour in these threads is much needed and so appreciated – thank you.
Thank you, Sarah.
I’m sorry Cee. I tried to tell off one of them, but I guess I went too far when I told her to get outta here, and it wasn’t posted. I was wondering if one of them wasn’t Baldwin’s PR. Their posts seemed so weird to me. But of course, it could be plain ole white women nonsense too. It’s not like that’s in short supply.
There’s a lot of nonsense in the world.
At one point I felt my anger was breaking down my English and perhaps I wasn’t expressing myself well. However, a lot of people do not want to listen, perhaps because they’re afraid that if they do they’ll realise they are at fault, too.
I was really surprised by some of the comments yesterday. Some people really went the extra mile to defend this woman and basically attacked others who were gobsmacked by all all of this.
Yes, thank you for the clarity that you brought to Hilaria’s “clarity.” I, too, can’t believe anyone was defending her. The instagram about Dr. Martin Luther King is absolutely revolting. The kindest thing I can say is that she needs help.
100%. It’s awful. So wrong. And her fans are defending her and calling her a great mom. Excuse me? She’s convinced her kids they’re Spanish, with Spanish names and all. Now that has to be confusing for kids to be sure. Not a great mom, NOPE.
@Midge – your comment has struck something in me which perhaps explains why this issue has resonated with me.
Her kids will grow up with a Spanish identity they don’t have and it will be their parents’ fault. My paternal family lied about my ancestry for 30 years and I only uncovered the truth by chance – I found documentation with my great grandparents names and they were different from what I had been told. Even my last name was different – I was taught my paternal family was half Italian (dad’s mum) and German (dad’s dad) when in fact they were Russian immigrants fleeing their country to avoid getting killed – they were Jews. And my grandfather decided to change his whole identity, dropped his Russian name and changed his last name to suit his own narrative, because he was ashamed of his origins and feared anti Semitism (rampant in my country).
Every single German thing I grew up with believing to be part of my ethnic and cultural makeup was a LIE. The same will happen to the Baldwin children, if and when they learn the truth. It will shock them to their core and make them question their identities and sense of self.
ITA @Midge. I’ve been lurking on her posts and so many have come to her defense, telling her to “ignore the haters because she’s a good mom.” I admittedly don’t know too much about her apart from what’s come to light about her con and the fact that she’s been married to AB for close to a decade. She does seem like an incredibly loving mother but I don’t understand why that precludes her from public accountability? I told someone yesterday that two things can be true at once: that she’s a great mother to her children and a vicious liar. Apparently her perceived status as the ultimate STAH mother makes her untouchable??? So strange.
@Cee, there is a book I think you’d like, called History of the Marranos, by Cecil Roth. It is all about what Spain did to their Jewish population, either expelling them for their religious beliefs, or forcing conversion on them. If they tried to practice in secret, they were found, tortured, and killed. Many Sephardic Jews don’t know their true background. If you ever saw the movie The Warriors, it is based on this guy Yellow Benji, who found out his parents were descended from two of them, and lived in fear, even in NYC. There are articles about him, and a graphic biography, but my favorite is the documentary, Flying Cut Sleeves. Jews are all ethnicities, but they’ve been chased out of so many places, that many people just see us as white. Many good wishes to you and your family from a fellow Jew.
Thanks Jenn, I’ll look out for the book. I still haven’t healed and so much of my history is still unknown.
Maybe she just likes the names. Do boys named Brian grow up thinking they’re Irish, or Scottish if they’re named Ian? Are Spanish names intrinsically foreign in a way that Irish, Italian, etc names aren’t?
She obviously has spent time in Spain because she speaks Spanish very well. Kobe Bryan gave his daughters Italian names because he had lived there and spoke the language. I doubt they’re confused.
@SMS you’re still missing the point and it’s pointless to keep trying to explain it to you.
@SMS: Kobe’s girls wouldn’t be confused because they haven’t been raised to believe that they and their mother are something they aren’t. Naming her kids Spanish names is one thing; perpetuating a myth is another. The fact that she compared her skin tone to HER DAUGHTER’S, telling her that one isn’t better than the other because it’s darker, or pretending people think she’s the nanny because she has dark hair and a fake tan, or insisting that they’re being raised in two cultures when they only belong to one, or using a phony accent, or acting as though she and her family are soooooooo Latinx that they can’t pronounce the name Baldwin or insisting that vacationing in Spain makes them Hispanic… that is what will confuse them. And at least two of them are old enough to be confused and to wonder why they were lied to. It’s one thing to admire a culture; it’s another to appropriate the identity and perpetuate stereotypes around it and take up space that you don’t deserve. As I am not Hispanic or Latina, I would like to suggest reading Aura Bogado’s comments on the subject.
Speaking English with a bad Spanish accent is straight up being an asshole even if she is fluent in Spanish. I am fluent in French and don’t start using broken English to look more French. It’s stupid to suggest what she has done here is fine. It’s not.
She could have just copied Penelope’s hair and makeup and used the look to snag Alec, been openly in love with Spanish culture and language, and left it at that. She’s allowed to like what she likes. But once you really lie about this to the point where you’re engaging with those magazines etc., you are asking for severe backlash. No one can help her now.
Cee, I totally agreed with you yesterday and today, and we need a diversity of perspectives here on this site, so I’m glad you’re back. You just made your points so well that I didn’t want to just write “This. 👆🏽“ under all your posts because it doesn’t add anything to the conversation. I sort of wish there was an upvoting system because I would have been giving up you upvotes throughout the thread.
Thank you, Osito!
I love this site so much I’d always try to come back. Yesterday I felt drained and so frustrated, however I’ve learned so much from so many people that I felt I needed to keep trying.
I thought your comments were great yesterday and remain amazed at the ones who can’t see the cultural appropriation here.
Thanks, Nic919 I always appreciate your comments.
@Cee I get the impression I’m one of those people who doesn’t get it. I wouldn’t want anyone to suffer pain because of their accent or otherness and genuinely regret that you have experienced this. That is inexcusable.
As a dual American/Spanish citizen who has lived in both countries I have met many non Spaniards who loved the culture and adopted it as their own.
However the internet makes it too easy to attack people anonymously. Just look at Meghan Markle who is constantly the target of distorted rumors and attacks. If Hilaria had a need to make herself more interesting it shows some inner anxiety or inadequacy that’s sad for her but I don’t think it’s evil or malicious.
I also think that this whole Spanish, Latina, White, POC conversation is really more of a reflection of how many Americans can’t be bothered to respect the fact that Spanish speakers come from a variety of different countries, cultures, races, social classes etc. and just dismissively lump them into one big category. Maybe we also do that with the British, Irish, Australians, Canadians, South African, etc but certainly not as much.
I had a colleague who would comment “Spanish, Dominican, Mexican, it’s all the same” which was incredibly rude. She went to a diversity training and learned that most complaints originated from Latino/Hispanics and not African Americans (like her) and stopped making those dismissive remarks. We can all learn to do better.
Agree with you. It’s dishonest of her, bizarre, and embarrassing. She’s not the first or last person to put on an accent in their real lives and overstate their ties to some other culture they wished they had grown up with. My parents and most of my family are immigrants with Indian accents…yes, at times in the past they have been discriminated against or made fun of for their accents. This wouldn’t offend me if someone was speaking in an Indian accent (although, not surprisingly, no one really puts on an affected Indian accent unless it’s in a movie or commercial and even then it doesn’t offend me). I think sure it shows her privilege, but people are losing their minds over this and claiming it represents so much more. If only people were this up in arms over Covid, anti-vaxxers, poverty, or- I don’t know- anything that actually matters.
Thanks Cee- have been obsessed w this Rachel Dolezal schtick. My own brother was one step away from an Exonerated Five situation- we were raised by our English 2nd language grandparents who were desperate to “fit in” w America, they wouldn’t or couldn’t stand up to authority- often could not protect us from prejudice or injustice. Be quiet, keep your head down. Stay out of trouble, work hard. Hilary & Rachel stole the hard won reward, given to us from older generations who were on edge & subservient 24/7 so -their- children could find American empowerment. If I have to explain this one more time…
I had no idea she was supposed to have been from Spain. She just looks like an American lady. Weird.
I think that is part of the issue. What does that mean? Looking “like an American”. Elsa Pataky is Spanish and has blue eyes and light hair. This nutjob took this fake identity based on this narrative of the exotic sexy Spaniard that really doesn’t hold. Not all Spaniards look like Penelope Cruz, not all Australians look like Margot Robbie, etc.
@Celeste Agreed. That comment actually irritates me more than what Hilaria Baldwin did. There’s not any one way to look American. Many Latin Americans are of Native American descent – you can’t get more American looking than that!
Never heard about this farce until today. Didn’t Alec call his wife a “baby collector” recently? Alec knows she is disturbed, and is in so deep with 5 children that there is no way out. Another dumb old man saddled with his embarrassing trophy wife for life. It’s a shame because Alec is very talented, and now has to work until he drops dead to support his large family.
You talk about the situation as if “poor” Alec doesn’t know where babies come from. He’s a grown ass man who knew exactly what he was doing in getting his wife pregnant five times. Come on.
Birds of a damn feather. Okay? Alec lied to his x Kim Basinger- told her he was a vegetarian, into “clean living”. He couldn’t keep up the charade & I believe it really hurt Kim. Alec rubbed it in her face after she married him- cigars, 16oz steaks, boozing it up….Poor Alec? Uh no. KARMA
@kgeo “She looks like an American lady.” Okay. Interesting way of putting things. What’s next? She’s not from “American blood?”
This is exactly what I commented on yesterday and someone tried to “ethnic-splain” things to me — A non-American that has been told to “go back to her country” her entire life as soon as people hear me speak another language.
What is “American” really? And what the heck does it mean to have “American blood?” or “Mexican blood?” or “Irish blood?” or “Add-a-country-here blood?” Does that “blood” negate the individual’s nationality or life-long culture that they were raised in? Seriously, go down that road and see where it leads. It’s Hitler-esque.
What Hilaria is doing is highly offensive, but the arguments over being “blood” this or that are even more disturbing. Are we as a society that obsessed with racial or ethnic purity that we can only identify ourselves by our DNA?
Every time I read her name I would think: “No parent in 200,000 years of human history has named their child ‘Hilaria,’ the plural Latin word for parties.” It was the plural that ticked me. Sure, celebrities give bonkerballs baby names like Cranberry but nobody, not even Elon Musk, names their child the plural Cranberries. But then, I know little about her other than she appears to believe she’s taken a job as Alec Baldwin’s baby factory. So: no, not shocked. This woman has been wildly waving red flags over her head for years.
Dang it! I posted this, then thought: PEACHES Geldof.
Haha! Thanks for a laugh in the midst of this oddness.
Phaedra you’ve got my ROFL LMFAO 🤪 🤣…even though you walked back with the “Peaches” reference I still think your plural point is gold. Absolute gold. Shows how careless the whole construction of a persona. Hillary Thomas sure did Talented Mr. Ripley’d the shit out of her identity. You also had me @ “took a job as Alec Baldwin’s baby factory” 😆 .
The video of her mom stumbling over calling her “Hilaria” is telling. She clearly dragged them into the whole sham. I can’t imagine how time consuming it must be to keep up a charade like that when loose ends are always going to pop up. I read that she hired people to clean up after anyone calling her out on social media, too. Yuck.
This comment made me laugh ALL THE WAY OUT LOUD. “Cranberries” is also my favorite fake dog name — I use it when I’m making fun of dog owners with out of control pups at the park. “Cranberries, get over here *now*!” Cranberries, that is not your ball!” “Cranberries, get that poop out of your mouth!” are all phrases that probably apply to lots of celebrity children as well as OOC pupperinos.
Aint that the TRUTH. Thought she was from some random Basque region…
After going so deep down this rabbit hole yesterday, I then turned to articles about why we’re so obsessed with this story, and there I was. Bored. Sheltering in place. End of bizarre and stressful year. This is just the right level of scandal.
Agreed. I’m living for this story.
The story is not malicious, no one was raped or killed or abused. But it does touch on white entitlement, and lies.
It is the perfect level of not too awful, but so random, and wrong and easy to judge.
I have been LOVING reading everything about it.
It’s like trash tv. Some days i watch America’s Next Top Model, some days i read about this crazy lady.
It is lifted my spirits after a sad christmas at the end of an awful year.
And she created this situation herself, so that’s extra amusing.
Omg, I started binge watching ANTM the other night, it got later and later. I kept telling myself I had to go to sleep but I had to see who won. I really wanted Marvin or Corey to win. I felt so bad for Corey being told he was not in the top 2 right before he had to go walk on the runway. He was so professional!
He had to have realized when their marriage papers and legal documents said Hillary. My parents are immigrants from Malta. My mom came here when she was pregnant with me. I just can’t imagine how this is a misunderstanding and how people she knows from her past didn’t flag this mess before now. It is really odd. I feel very bad for her kids. They have Spanish names! Is her ethnic heritage Spanish? Her relatives? It is a weird story.
She is a white girl from Boston who grew up there and was rich enough to vacation in Spain, so she portrays herself as having two cultures and being the beauty of diversity (these are her words, not mine). She is and was deliberately trying to paint herself and her kids as having Spanish heritage. This isn’t just some funny story where a rich woman gets caught out- this is someone who took space from actual Latinas and lied deliberately.
My parents are immigrants People in Malta have various skin tones. It has a history not unlike Spain. I am white but also Maltese and the daughter of immigrants with heavy accents who struggled because of those accents in a lot of ways. ( we also had no money.) My parents worked their butts off. The white part doesn’t really bother me. It’s the total lie situation that is disturbing me. There are white Spanish people. But Hilaria isn’t one of them. It’s very Strange. Like what do her high school friends think of all of this. How are we just finding out.
@Chrissy I had an aesthetician here in NYC who was from Malta. I loved her accent when she spoke English, tho I could not for the life of me place where it was from until she told me. It was almost a mix of British and Italian? I loved it and she taught me a lot about Maltese culture during our appointments.
I’m so sorry for your parents struggle, that’s something so difficult to have to deal with. My mother is an immigrant from DR and while I don’t think she has an accent, at all, it’s clear to me that to others she does have one, based on some horrific stories she’s told me and observations from friends.
@Chrissy, I think a huge issue is America has all these people who go too far and decide that THEY are the POC because it’s not enough for them to just be allies. They need to live the drama they perceive and create. I watched some far left people this summer calling police officers who are of color terrible racist terms and then defending it. Or journalists who were POC. That was their first instinct: call POC racist names and then say they are defending against racism. They create these personas and then convince themselves they are defenders against evil. In the meantime, they use cultural appropriation against actual POC and whitesplain racism to POC. “Hilaria” truly thinks she has two cultures, and is about diversity. She literally claimed bias against herself when claiming people thought she was her kids’ nanny or used HER SPRAY TANNED SKIN to tell her own child, “Look, your skin is no better than mine.” She has convinced herself she is an immigrant. She believes her own lies, and she believes she is the victim. She enjoyed her rich girl, privileged vacations and decided to cosplay based on them.
Taken out of context the kids names are fine. Living in CA I wouldn’t think twice about a white person with a Spanish sounding first name if I didn’t know the whole family was pulling some weird grift. Like, this is a Latin influenced culture so naming your white daughter Carmen after your childhood aunt-like neighbor wouldn’t be strange. So in theory the kids will be fine.
Her book was called Living Clearly but she is hella shady! Lol
I wonder what year she started using the accent? Because I read a comment on a blog from a lady saying Hillary didn’t have an accent when she met her in 2009.
The minute she met Alec, I’m guessing. LOL
I find it interesting that when fessing up, the words she chose were “I’m a white lady”. Not “I’m a white American lady”. This makes me think that she sees Spaniards as POC. And if this were to be the case, she would not be alone. Antonio Banderas once famously stated “I found out I wasn’t white when I first went to the US”.
I believe her because her Spanish is so good, she has a strong peninsular accent, sounds native Spaniard to my Argentine ears.
My South American father has a perfect Midwest accent. Doesn’t mean he’s from Indiana. He just bilingual.
Same. I have a perfectly fine eastern coast accent, doesn’t mean I’m from NYC. I’m just bilingual and developed that particular accent.
But the facts are she’s simply not Spanish, grew up in Massachusetts, and lied about everything. She may be good at mimicking an accent, but it’s not true.
But she has said she was from Mallorca which at the time she was supposedly growing up there would mean that the main language she would have been taught would be Catalan. Specifically the dialect of the island called Mallorquí. Spanish would have been her second language. They didn’t start phasing out Mallorguí until 2012.
Believe her that what? She’s literally a white American who grew up in Boston with a white, American family whose roots stretch back generations in this country. There’s nothing “Spanish” about her other than she speaks it and her parents retired to Mallorca ten years ago.
Natasha, the issue at hand is not her great Spanish accent but the fact she speaks English with a fake, thick latino accent. It’s a mockery and an insult.
Absolutely! And to appropriate the negative experiences of others for her own gain is despicable. She has never experienced being mocked for her accent as a child, or being ‘mistaken for her kids nanny because she is brown’ or ‘not having a TV because she grew up poor in Spain’ as she has said. She is fetishizing other peoples experiences and suffering. And Alec and Ireland Balwin just need to STFU. They cant see the issue because they are white, rich and priveleged and dont see racism as a problem either.
Natasha my Spanish is really good and I can fake a Mexican accent like a pro. That doesn’t mean I present myself to the whole world as “Mexican” and change my name to Valeria from Valerie. This woman is unhinged, and utterly without regard for how other cultures have faced ridicule, disrespect and downright hatred in America. Her husband is a tempermental tool and they both deserve each other but to extend the lie to her children is reprehensible.
I’ve been told by native Spaniards that my accent is good when I speak Spanish. I was taught by someone who is from Spain so I learned to speak the language with the same accent as his. I have zero Spanish heritage and hail from the northeast U.S. just like Hillary.
Her accent is not native spaniard to my native spaniard ears AT ALL, she sounds like an american.
@Andrea. Thanks I feel the same. I think there was ONE interview where she basically imitated a “KMEX television” schtick. I’m gonna say the trolls are out on social media, here as well. I hear so much repetitive & ludicrous defense. Great distraction tho.
So who’s going to play Alec on the SNL skit?
I hear Donald Trump’s looking for a job…
He’s definitely tweeting his little fingers off on this.
What I don’t get is he never met her parents? Her family? Even *if* she swindled him when they started dating, I feel like the lie would unravel fairly quickly. There’s no way he could have married/had kids with this woman if he didn’t know. This whole thing is bizarre and ridiculous and gross.
I’m sure he knew their background. She just embellished her background and changed it from going on vacations to Spain with her family to the lie of living there during parts of her childhood and thus being raised in two cultures. They married after a year of dating. Her parents lived in Spain, and so did her brother. He probably didn’t have much contact w ith them before the wedding. Her father is fluent in Spanish, had a love and interest in the culture and food since spending time there in his late teens staying with a Spanish family. So I guess that was Spanish adjacent enough for Alec. LOL
She said after the wedding, he hadn’t been to Spain yet. Her family and friends (so she says) from Spain flew over for the wedding. I can see how she could pull off her Hilaria with an accent persona for a while, at least.
But at some point he had to have figured out the truth. I guess he didn’t care. He liked the Hilaria persona. Who knows? He seems to be wrapped around her finger. Whatever makes Hilaria happy is his motto, and how dare we question her story and lies.
The fact that Alec Baldwin just had to bring up his connection to Jeffrey Epstein and being listed in the notorious black book in all of this — absolute mess.
After reading this I legit feel as if I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole. WTF??!!?? How is this even possible…dear God….
I’m just here for the comments and the continuation of this story – if they just stopped posting on social media this would die eventually. She’s not THAT big of a celebrity – it’s the holidays – people are bored and want something to laugh at, but she LOVES the attention. As others have said – this is absolutely cultural appropriation. Doesn’t matter the skin color (even though as others have mentioned – her MLK instagram post – she thinks she’s brown). Some of us can’t escape our race/culture. I have had my skin color commented on by coworkers, bosses, friends, especially when I get a tan and I get darker than my usual caramel shade. I recently moved to Massachusetts and in the middle of our perfectly normal English speaking conversation have had two separate white men switch to SPANISH – God knows why. They wanted to impress me? Make me feel at home?? I don’t know. Her and Alec an sulk and whine and cry in their big mansion with their 5 healthy beautiful kids. I do wonder if anyone has reached out to her parents for comment though. It would be hilarious if one of them cracks and spills it ALL.
Dear Alec Baldwin
Most of the world is considering the source.. your wife, Hillary
Never liked Alec, and I never will. To me, he gives off the d**chebag vibe.
Colleague of my husband’s lived in Alec’s building fifteen years ago (pre Hillaria.) They said he was a total dick, and no one could stand him-but he was actually very kind to their little kids.
The video of her on The Today Show acting like she cannot pronounce the word “cucumber” is a scream. This bish is a pathological liar!
Omg, I just watched it, that is insane!
Some of us tried to explain this yesterday but imma try again.
Spanish folks are largely white and there are a decent percentage of white folks in Hispanic and Latin American populations. The world knows that, yes.
However, America is a deeply racist and xenophobic society towards those they have deemed other and the vast majority of Spanish speaking people have been deemed other. We even discriminate against Puerto Ricans and they are U.S citizens in a US territory (and many of them are white).
What Hilaria did is cultural appropriation because for one, she invented Spanish roots and a Spanish accent knowing that her educational background, her upper class roots, and then her marriage to Alec would protect her from the brunt of xenophobia she would face by pretending to be Hispanic. And while Spaniards aren’t Hispanic, depending on your definition, she knew Americans would perceive her as such and magazine covers she landed certainly did.
And there is no way someone with her origins, upper class Boston ffs wouldn’t know how Spanish speaking folks are lumped together as illegal, ignorant, the help, and other negative connotations. She was also trading on the hot, sexy Latina image a la Sofia Vergara.
Again, to the non-Americans, yes, most of us know that Spain isn’t a poor country. But this girl was trading on the idea that at first or third glance, she was Latina. Also, I can’t explain every American bias in a way that makes sense because racism doesn’t make sense. If you could just explain why people shouldn’t be racist, why their perceptions are wrong or inaccurate, we wouldn’t need racist anymore but ooooobbbviously….
Just as an example, I graduated high school in South Texas. You wouldn’t believe the amount of white people who think the Texans who live among them must have come over the border, people whose families have roots older than the Alamo. But they speak Spanish so they must be here illegally, even the white ones.
It’s like Eva Longoria has said – she’s 9th generation* American and people still perceive her as the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Guess what? Most of the South of the USA was part of the Mexican Empire (they even had a monarchy). Once the land was lost and gained, the people there simply changed nationality.
*I recall 9th, but I could be wrong. However, the point stands. Her family has been in the US as long as Hilary’s yet no one questions Hilary’s identity and citizenship because she’s white.
Interesting you should mention her because that’s the area I graduated high school from and she’s not wrong at all.
Thank you, Cee. Thank you for writing everything that I’m thinking and feeling and for describing your anger and frustration with people who are working overtime to give her the benefit of the doubt that doesn’t exist. There is a loooooong history of what Spanish speakers endure in the US.
DS9, I appreciate your perspective so much. On behalf of my mother and my family, thank you for explaining to those who refuse to understand.
An SNL skit about this would be hilarious but it’ll never happen…they are too far up Alec’s a$$ to ever go after his wife.
And I planned to do real work today…after wasting the last hour Googling images of both Hilaria and Penelope Cruz, there is some serious Single White Female stuff going on with Hilaria. Good lord. That’s one remake of a film that I would pay money for.
Was her book really titled, “Living Clearly?” LOL
I read that he had a unrequited crush on a real Spaniard, Penelope Cruz. She decided to cosplay Penelope to get Alec’s attention, and everyone finally caught on.
So sad that the grift is up lol
I wonder if that’s why she keeps popping out kids? “He won’t leave me with all these kids”. The child support check would be huge though…
Ruhly? Yah think$ there wa$ $TRATEGY???
I am loving this crazy story way more than I should! Also she looks like a completely different person from these pictures a few years ago, right? Her face looked really tweaked and generic Botox rich wife now which I find so predictable once a woman gets a rich husband.
I don’t think it’s tweaked. In that home video she did with her youngest baby not too long ago that someone posted on the internet, she has forehead lines and lines above her mouth in certain lighting. Her face actually looks a little gaunt compared to when she was younger and/or when she is pregnant. That’s all I see. It’s the one real thing about Hilaria/Hillary. No big fake lips, no big fake cheeks, etc. And in my mid-30’s I could see the difference in losing some of the natural fat I had in my face compared to my 20s, and I had a thin face to begin with. Your face changes a bit.
Alec knew but she was young, hot and horny so he never really cared.
But how complicit was he? The times he referred to her as his Spanish wife? So bizarre.
I feel like he was totally taken in, and that’s because he doesn’t seem to do much, family-wise. You never see pictures of him with his brothers or nieces or nephews. Most pictures of him with his wife and kids are on the red carpet or photo ops. He seems to just kind of go in and out. I think he liked that the in-laws were far away and didn’t really need to be dealt with, and he didn’t care much for details. He is way too defensive, at least for now.
My favorite part is the article where “Hilaria” claims that her Massachusetts and Vermont-born, lifelong American, Ivy League-educated and professional parents couldn’t pronounce the Anglo-Irish name “Baldwin”
https://twitter.com/booogiebooo/status/1343664478345457667?s=20
That 2014 Vanity Fair article is over the top. I read the translation because I’m not fluent in Spanish but if anyone reading it in the original would like to confirm…it absolutely is about a young Spanish woman loving NYC but missing her home and something something paella. 🧐
That article is nuts. SHE’S nuts…and her parents are her enablers.
I’m not one for “cancel culture” but this woman clearly deserves it. She pretended to be someone she was not. I’m not saying lives should be ruined over this but she seems to have a pretty great life AWAY from the spotlight. Maybe she should just stay out of it.
Two people I do not want to see in 2021, Hilaria and Lori Laughlin.
In three months, I see a baby number six pregnancy announcement coming. Mark my words.
She totally gives those Tori Spelling vibes.
Yep, I was thinking that too
This story is peak 2020. I know it’s supposed to be harmless and all but it rubs me in the wrong way. I’m a latina inmigrant in a G7 country and I’m well aware that most of us, the non-European inmigrants are regarded in a different way .
That video of her speaking to a Spanish outlet is uncomfortable to watch. It’s evident that Spanish is not her mothertongue and yet she makes all this charade to pretend it is. It would had been one thing to say that she adored the country and culture and considered herself an adopted daughter and another to pretend to be a Spanish woman.
All I know us that the Spanish press is one of the most incisive and unforgiving so they might have a field day with her shenanigans.
I just saw an interview with her where she said she ‘moved here to go to NYU’ and the host said where from, and she said ‘my family lives in Spain’ and then she said ‘I didn’t know anything of the pop culture at all but I know a little now’ omg cringe! she insinuated to the hosts and the audience that she moved to America from Spain to attend NYU. WHAT IN THE WORLD. This day in age you can’t lie about this stuff. Just saw an interview where her mom was talking about her medical background and several generations are born and raised in the USA. This is weird.
Yes it was Cat and Nat! She is so elusive. She said “I came here when I was 19”
“My family is in Spain”
So odd
The HilariaBaldwin subreddit is a treasure trove. There’s an old article where she claims her family had a hard time understanding “Baldwin” when she told them she was dating him
They just had a hard time understanding why anyone would date a Baldwin.
Lol
Was she inspired by the friends episode where Ross pretends to be a British professor?
Safe to say she will now be filed under the milli vanilli section of celebrities.
Page Six has a story where Hilarious Hilaria was, just 30 days ago, talking on her podcast about how she loved the brand Zara “before I came to this country.” Bish you were born, raised and likely conceived in Massachusetts. There is no you “before” you arrived on U.S. soil.
Is this harmless? Not really. Anyone who pretends to be something they’re not for any sort of gain—and Hillary very clearly used her so-called “exotic” backstory to not only score Alec Baldwin, but also media attention and before that yoga clients—is, “how you say in English?,” perpetrating a fraud.
@em — Microaggressions matter, and how people are seeing this as an aspect of American-style racism/ethnocentrism is opening some really important discussions about how non-white people are impacted and have been historically impacted by overt and covert bias. We contain multitudes and can have lots of passion for lots of different topics — for sure, this isn’t the only thing I care about, nor do I think this one story has global impact. But lots of the discussions here are worthy to have.
As to your own example of people using accents that are not their own, you’re completely entitled to your opinion, but there are also very big cultural conversations happening about whether or not non-Asian people should have access to those accents, which I’m sure you’re aware of. Personally, I’m on the side of “if it hurts one of us, it hurts us all and needs to stop,” and if that’s not where you are, ok. We can talk about that. But please don’t dismiss people saying, “This behavior hurts,” just because it doesn’t hurt you.
She also claims to have loved Zara before she was in this country. So before birth?
So wrong on many levels, this chick decided she was just not enough. Then took another culture because she could. This helped land her a Baldwin and she has 5 kids because she knows he will divorce her. I’m a Latina (PR) from the Bronx.
‘The source’ is her father too. David L. Thomas Jr wrote in a 2015 blog post for International Integrators, “My path in life has been heavily influenced by Spanish language and culture, and not because I have an iota of latin blood in my veins.”
There is something very manipulative about Hillary Hayward-Thomas. She constantly plays the ‘victim’ when anyone calles her out about anything, including how she’s trying to turn the story around on being outed, by claiming she’s ‘insecure’ about her accents and not speaking clearly enough in either language – like it’s our fault and we’re making fun of her. She’s a gigante grifter.
I don’t understand the connection between the Amy Schumer post and this revelation about her nationality. Why did both happen in such close proximity, what is the actual link?
Hilaria posted a thirst trap like a week ago of her in her underwear holding the new baby. And amy re posted the photo as a happy holidays from me and my baby like spoof. Then Hilaria posted a whole video about how amy shouldn’t be mean to me and body inclusivity something something. And then someone non famous responded to all that on Twitter saying it’s funny Hilaria has maintained this Spain grift for so long (apparently it was always low key known just not viral) and that opened the flood gates.
My guess is Alec knew exactly where she was from, but didn’t give a rat’s ass about her twisting the truth. I think it’s a case of shrug, who cares.
[*He’s ranting because he like to rant.*]
Wow, this is insane. Alec got angry and used F* argument. Did Alec talked with her with or without accent? I hate they’re playing the victim while there was no hate just pure facts. Couldn’t pronounce cucumber.. She was born in Spain. Maybe it’s amusing but for me it’s scary. I’d be afraid of someone who pretended like this for 10 years! I’d have been exhausted. I don’t want to judge but there might be something wrong with her!
Yeah there’s something wrong with her alright. Long term living on lies is a sure sign. To be honest the baby thing had me side-eyeing her. Babies and toddlers need and deserve so much attention and nurturing.