Kylie Rancor
In a confusing story that keeps delivering equal parts amusement and frustration, Hilaria Baldwin has responded to allegations floating across the internet that she’s been pretending to be Spanish.
The 36-year-old wife of actor Alec Baldwin has long faced murmured rumors that she’s actually a white woman named Hillary from Boston, Massachusetts, who has been faking a Spanish accent for years. And now she’s copping to at least some of those accusations…kind of.
Baldwin posted a seven-and-a-half minute video to Instagram over the weekend to “be clear” on her heritage.
“I’m born in Boston, and then I spent some of my childhood in Boston, some of my childhood in Spain,” she said, with no trace of a Spanish accent this time around.
She admitted that she is, in fact, “a white girl,” and that “Hillary” is the name she used in “this country,” whereas “Hilaria” is what she was called in Spain growing up.
“My whole family calls me Hilaria,” Baldwin explained, adding that she decided to “consolidate” the two names before she met her husband and stuck with Hilaria.
“Let’s be very clear that Europe has a lot of white people in there and my family is white,” she said. “Ethnically, I am a mix of many, many, many things. Culturally, I grew up with two cultures so it’s really as simple as that.”
The concern over Baldwin’s background blew up after people started pulling out past receipts that offered up contradictory information regarding her past — including classmates confirming she never had an accent growing up — vs what she presented herself to be.
While embracing other cultures you grew up experiencing isn’t innately a negative, muddying the narrative to come across as an immigrant is questionable at best, and a lot of folks weren’t happy with Baldwin’s explanation of her background.
But many were simply amused by the insanity of it all.
It’s the wild ride no one expected to close out 2020 with, but here we are.