Hilaria Baldwin was the talk of the internet this holiday season, as the podcaster and yoga instructor was called out for allegedly faking Spanish ancestry. Now, her husband Alec Baldwin has come to her defence.
Some quick background: the whole mess began on December 21, when Twitter user @lenibriscoe tweeted, "You have to admire Hilaria Baldwin's commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person." Subsequent tweets in the lengthy thread pointed out that Hilaria's birth name is Hilary Hayward-Thomas and that she was raised in Massachusetts.
Twitter sleuths also shared videos in which Hilaria speaks in differing levels of a Spanish accent, including one where she appears to forget the English word for "cucumber." During an appearance on the podcast #MOMTRUTHS this past April, Hilaria claimed that she moved to the U.S. from Spain at age 19 to go to NYU, and her biography on her agency's website said, "Baldwin was born in Mallorca, Spain" (it has since been changed). Baldwin has subsequently confirmed that she was born and raised in Massachusetts and only visited Spain on family holidays.
Following all that, Alec Baldwin posted a lengthy, rambling Instagram video addressing the controversy and discussing how lies get spread on social media. He said, "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… There's things that have been said lately about people that I love, that I care about deeply, which are ridiculous. I mean, just ridiculous."
In the final moments of the eight-and-a-half-minute video, he adds, "When you love somebody, you want to defend them." He never mentions his wife's name, nor directly addresses the controversy surrounding her lineage.
Below, watch the video of Alec Baldwin.
Some quick background: the whole mess began on December 21, when Twitter user @lenibriscoe tweeted, "You have to admire Hilaria Baldwin's commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person." Subsequent tweets in the lengthy thread pointed out that Hilaria's birth name is Hilary Hayward-Thomas and that she was raised in Massachusetts.
Twitter sleuths also shared videos in which Hilaria speaks in differing levels of a Spanish accent, including one where she appears to forget the English word for "cucumber." During an appearance on the podcast #MOMTRUTHS this past April, Hilaria claimed that she moved to the U.S. from Spain at age 19 to go to NYU, and her biography on her agency's website said, "Baldwin was born in Mallorca, Spain" (it has since been changed). Baldwin has subsequently confirmed that she was born and raised in Massachusetts and only visited Spain on family holidays.
Following all that, Alec Baldwin posted a lengthy, rambling Instagram video addressing the controversy and discussing how lies get spread on social media. He said, "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… There's things that have been said lately about people that I love, that I care about deeply, which are ridiculous. I mean, just ridiculous."
In the final moments of the eight-and-a-half-minute video, he adds, "When you love somebody, you want to defend them." He never mentions his wife's name, nor directly addresses the controversy surrounding her lineage.
Below, watch the video of Alec Baldwin.
