Hilaria Baldwin, wife of Alec, has responded to allegations that she’s been impersonating a Spanish woman for the past decade.
The saga started last week, with a thread from @lenibriscoe, who alleged that Baldwin is deep in a “decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person.” The thread supports its claims with videos of Baldwin switching between an American accent and something vaguely Spanish; research on her family history showing she (and her parents) were born in the U.S., though her bios still indicate she was born in Mallorca, Spain; and comment from alleged acquaintances who know her from Boston as Hillary Hayward-Thomas, the name that appears on an old Myspace account.
On Sunday, Hilaria, who married Alec Baldwin in 2012, responded to the allegations in two videos, stating that she was born in Boston, not Spain; that her accent comes from living in both Spain and the U.S.; and that her “mixing” the two comes from insecurity. She also said she’s told interviewers that she’s from Boston, but they all seem to write that she’s from Spain for some reason. (Her parents reportedly do live in Spain, but only since 2011.)
Alec Baldwin responded as well, in a rambling eight-minute video, calling Twitter a “vast orchard of crap” and denying the allegations. As the Daily Beast pointed out, the first person to call out Hilaria’s ruse on Twitter back in 2012 was Genevieve Sabourin, the woman charged with stalking him.
It’s a lot to unpack, but the memes offer a little more context for this truly wild story. People also pointed out that Baldwin’s 30 Rock character falls for a woman putting on an English accent (Emily Mortimer), one with an over-the-top Boston accent (Julianne Moore), and that Salma Hayek’s character is portrayed as Puerto Rican.
While this story is a little different than, say, a white professor pretending to be a Black woman, Baldwin still benefited from her grift in problematic ways, landing profiles in ¡Hola! and Latina, despite not being Latina.
Today’s top stories
| ‘Fill her up’: Bartender gives woman a glass of water when the man she’s with orders tequila shot |
| ‘I don’t think my store has even sold one’: Whataburger employees take picture with first customer who bought a burger box |
| ‘It was a template used by anyone in the company’: Travel agent’s ‘condescending’ out-of-office email reply sparks debate |
| Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online. |
