Hola!
Hilaria Balwin addressed criticism that her Spanish accent – which often mysteriously vanishes – is “fake” in her new TLC show.
Called “The Baldwins,” the reality show premieres Sunday, Feb. 23 (10 p.m.) and follows her home life with Alec Baldwin and their seven kids in their five-bedroom Manhattan apartment.
In the series premiere, Hilaria defends her there-and-gone accent.
“I love English, I also love Spanish,” she told the cameras. “And when I mix the two, that doesn’t make me inauthentic, it makes me normal.”
“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me sad and hurt and put me in dark places…. but my family, my friends, my community are the [people] who speak multiple languages, who have belonging in multiple places, and realize that we are a mix…that’s gonna have an impact in how we sound,” she said regarding criticism that her accent is fake.
“That’s normal. That’s called being human.”
The former yoga instructor, 41, and actor, 66, have been married since 2012. They’re parents of Carmen, 11, Rafael, 9, Leonardo, 8, Romeo, 6, Eduardo and Marilu, 4, and Ilaria, 2. Alec and ex-wife Kim Basinger are also parents of daughter Ireland, 29.
Ever since she rose into the spotlight, her ethnicity and background has been a subject of public speculation.
Hilaria claims to be Spanish, and has a Spanish accent that often vanishes as her voice becomes English.
In 2020, a tweet from Leni Brisco read: “You have to admire Hilaria Baldwin’s commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person.”
Hilaria took to Instagram to respond in a video.
“There’s been some questions about where I’m born, I’m born in Boston … I spent some of my childhood in Boston, some of my childhood in Spain, my family, my brother, my parents, my nephew, everybody is over there in Spain now, I’m here,” she said at the time.
Her former classmates also came forward around that time, tweeting: “I went to high school with her. Genuinely lovely person, I recall, but fully a white girl from Cambridge.”
Another said: “I went to high school with her. She was perfectly nice and serious about ballroom dancing. Her name was indeed Hillary Hayward-Thomas and she did not have her current accent.”
In 2020, Post columnist Maureen Callahan wrote that Hilaria is a “scam artist” on par with Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who claimed to be black.
During past TV appearances, Hilaria has spoken with a Spanish accent, and on one occasion during a cooking segment, she even seemingly forgot the English word for “cucumber.”
In a 2024 clip of a cooking video, she also seemingly forgot the English word for “onions.”
During the premiere episode of “The Baldwins,” Hilaria often doesn’t have a Spanish accent and does sound like someone from Boston when she talks directly to the camera.
In one scene when she and Alec are talking, Alec tells her, “Let’s talk slower, you’re speaking English in a Spanish cadence, which is always perilous for me… I can’t understand you.”
“The Baldwins” airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on TLC.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
