Hilaria Baldwin is once again addressing the authenticity of her Spanish heritage, this time in an interview with the New York Times.
The yoga influencer and wife of Alec Baldwin faced a lot of social media backlash over the weekend after a Twitter user sparked an online investigation into her past—writing, “You have to admire Hilaria Baldwin’s commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person.” The tweet led to the revelation that Hilaria was, in fact, born Hillary, and was raised in Boston by two parents with deep, ancestral roots in Massachusetts. It also prompted the mother of five to post a lengthy Instagram video addressing the many questions raised by conflicting narratives about her lineage, explaining that while she is “a white girl” from Boston, she also grew up in a family that valued Spanish culture.
In an interview with the Times on Wednesday, Hilaria once again walked those suspicious of her European ties through her origin story. She claims she was not aware ¡Hola! magazine, the cover of which she has posed for twice, has repeatedly, inaccurately identified her as a native Spaniard, because she doesn’t read articles about herself. She also said the bio on her agency’s website which stated that she was born in Mallorca, Spain is likely the result of her representation using “unverified information from the internet to write a sloppy bio.” As for forgetting the English word for cucumber on the Today show? Hilaria chalks that up to a “brain fart.”
“The things I have shared about myself are very clear,” she continued. “I was born in Boston. I spent time in Boston and in Spain. My family now lives in Spain. I moved to New York when I was 19 years old and I have lived here ever since. For me, I feel like I have spent 10 years sharing that story over and over again. And now it seems like it’s not enough.” Hilaria told the Times that she told her husband the same story upon their first meeting, although there seems to have still been some miscommunication between the couple; in 2013, Alec told David Letterman that his wife was “from Spain.”
Though she is not Spanish, Hilaria added that Spain “was part of my father’s childhood,” and that her family “created these deep, deep, deep bonds” with the country. The Times writes, however, that she “declined to explain in detail how frequently they traveled there or how long they stayed.” Her older brother and both parents all live in Mallorca now. “Who is to say what you’re allowed to absorb and not absorb growing up?” the influencer told the Times. “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.” She told the paper that she doesn’t feel she’s misrepresented herself or her story, saying the real problem is that “people don’t have the attention span for that kind of thing.”
The paper spoke with the woman who wrote the original tweet calling out Hilaria’s cultural identity as well. “We’re all bored and it’s just seemed so strange to me that no one had ever come out and said it, especially for someone who gets so much media attention,” she said. The Twitter user was granted the rare privilege of anonymity, the Times wrote, due to her fear that Alec Baldwin—who agreed to take anger management classes in 2019—“would punch her.”
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
— Inside the Always Online, All-Consuming World of Twin Flames Universe
— Rudy Giuliani’s Daughter, Caroline, on How to Accept That Trump Lost
— Carl Lentz, Ranin Karim, and Hillsong’s Unfurling Scandal
— Billie Eilish Shares How She Spent the Pandemic in Latest Time Capsule
— The Queen Says Goodbye to Her Beloved Dorgi, Vulcan
— Barack Obama on His Book, the Election, and What Actually Makes America Great
— How We Unmasked the Hollywood Con Queen Suspect
— From the Archive: Her Most Loyal Subjects, a History of the Queen’s Kennels
— Not a subscriber? Join Vanity Fair to receive full access to VF.com and the complete online archive now.