We’ve been starved of news this week – there’s only been the small matter of the country shutting down again to stave off a mutant strain of coronavirus and Britain finally Brexiting – so people are desperate for an interesting story. Enter the Hilaria Baldwin debacle and a sudden interest in whether or not she has overstated her Spanish accent and connection to Spain, which has raised questions of cultural appropriation and identity politics.
It started after a clip she posted to her Instagram page went viral. Her post was a response to a jokey post the actor and comedian Amy Schumerhad previously shared. Amy had reposted an old picture from Hilaria’s Instagram, where she’s in her underwear with her and her actor husband Alec Baldwin’s new baby. Amy ended up deleting the post and the pair made up. That was just the beginning.
THEN, people started noticing that the Spanish accent Hilaria had spoken with previously appeared to be missing from the video she had recorded in response to Amy’s post. Twitter-user and detective-extraordinaire @lenibriscoe tweeted a thread of 'evidence' with the comment: ‘You have to admire Hilaria Baldwin’s commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person.’
Others pointed out that her management agency's online biography said she was born on the Spanish island of Mallorca, she has said she moved to the US at age 19 to go to university and her Instagram bio reads as ‘mama to five Baldwinitos’ (hers and Alec’s children all have Spanish names: Leonardo, Carmen Gabriela, Rafael, Romeo Alejandro and Eduardo Pau).
Others have come forward to claim they grew up with her in Massachusetts; that her birth name is Hillary Hayward-Thomas; and that she didn’t have a trace of an accent during her childhood or younger adulthood.
In fact, @lenibriscoe’s thread suggested that both sides of Hilaria’s family hailed from Massachusetts. However, her parents and brother have lived in Spain for a number of years, according to the website Vulture.
As more clips of her resurfaced and accusations that she had previously faked her accent grew, a clip of her apparently not knowing the word for cucumber in English went viral.
Journalist Aura Bogado tweeted that she found the whole thing offensive and harmful, accusing Hilaria of appropriating a Spanish identity when she appeared in Latinx outlets, including Latina and Hola!.
‘The fact that @hilariabaldwin pretended to be from Spain with that ridiculous accent, while some of us have been denied opportunities for our actual accents, is disgusting,’ Aura wrote. ‘The fact that she pretended to be an immigrant, at a time of hatred, detention, and deportation, is sick.’
Hilaria fought back, saying critics who have accused her of faking her Spanish roots have been ‘misrepresenting me’. She told the New York Times ‘There is not something I’m doing wrong, and I think there is a difference between hiding and creating a boundary.’
In response to accusations of cultural appropriation, she said: ‘Who is to say what you're allowed to absorb and not absorb growing up? 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.’
Her accent changes depending on how much Spanish she has been speaking, she says. ‘This is something that I’ve always been a little bit insecure about, but I’ve decided maybe 2021 we will get over that.’
In another Instagram video she explained she grew up using the name Hillary in the US and Hilaria in Spain, before ‘consolidating’ under Hilaria. As for forgetting the English word for cucumber, she says it was a ‘brain fart’ because she was nervous about being on television.
Alec Baldwin contributed his two cents, calling TMZ and the New York Post a ‘sewage plant’ in his own Instagram post, and encouraged people to ‘consider the source.’
All in all, it sounds like a confusing situation, where no one really quite understands what on earth has been going on... so a fitting end to 2020.
READ MORE: More Brits Will Be Doing Dry January Than Ever In 2021, Says Poll