Wife of famous actor Alec Baldwin, former SNL star and influencer Hilaria Baldwin has made a video, explaining her background, after multiple users on social media alleged she had pretended to be Spanish for years despite she and her family having no Spanish background at all.
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"I've seen chatter online questioning my identity and culture. This is something I take very seriously, and for those who are asking— I'll reiterate my story, as I've done many times before. 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. This is very important to me. I understand that my story is a little different, but it is mine, and I'm very proud of it", she said.
The statement was published after a Twitter user issued a series of posts, suggesting the influencer perpetrated "a decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person".
In the restricted tweets by @lenibriscoe, the author showed several videos with Hilaria talking with a Spanish accent during the Today show, and finding it hard to remember the English word for "cucumber". However, further posts say that her parents lived in Massachusetts and traced her family living there in times that "pre-dated the American Revolution".
According to the allegations, Hilaria's birth name is Hillary Hayward-Thomas. The post had a link to an old MySpace page that allegedly belonged to her, and a comment by a man, who said he was her classmate.
I Deleted my previous tweet. I went to HS with Hillary Hayward Thomas in Boston and she had no accent, was archetypal northeastern prep schooler. we all mythologize ourselves, but her pretending to be ESL is a level of exaggeration that seems problematic.
— David Golann (@DavidGolann) December 25, 2020
An alleged photo from her senior yearbook at the Cambridge School of Weston, Massachusetts, also shows her name as "Hillary Hayward-Thomas".