Hilaria Baldwin is here to respond to accusations that she isn’t really Spanish.
Yup.
This really is a controversy that has engulfed social media and most of the Internet.
Last week, you see, a Twitter user burrowed down a rabbit hole of the 36-year old yoga instructor’s background.
(Hilaria has been married to Alec Baldwin since 2012 and has five children with the actor.)
This Twitter user shared links to Baldwin’s past TV interviews, citing her “Fake Spanish accent” in the process and raising concerns over Hilaria’s Spanish roots in general.
He noted, for example, that she grew up in Massachusetts and used to go by the name Hillary when she was a student.
The thread has since gone viral, generation a great deal of discussion and mockery.
And now it has generated a lengthy retort from Hilaria Baldwin.
In a video posted on Instagram on Sunday, December 27, Baldwiin fought back years while talking about the backlash.
She addressed questions about her accent, saying: “If I’ve been speaking a lot of Spanish, I tend to mix them and if I’m speaking more English…then I mix that.”
“It’s one of those things that’s always been a little bit, I’ve been a little insecure about,” she added, explaining that she begins to mix languages when she feels anxious or upset.
Hilaria had plenty more to say on the topic, too.
“I try to speak more clearly in each language.
“I think that that’s something that I should try to do but sometimes I mess it up and it’s not something that I’m like, playing at, so I want that to be very, very, very clear.”
What about the haters? The trolls? Those who think Baldwin is trying to come across as especially exotic or something?
“I kind of want to say just leave me alone,” Hilaria said.
“Leave me alone. I’m not doing anything wrong by being me and maybe that doesn’t look like somebody who you’ve met before, but I mean, isn’t that the beauty of diversity?”
Yes. The issue is that these critics don’t believe Baldwin is actually diverse.
The fitness guru refused to apologize for her unique experience, though, adding:
“There’s nothing wrong with me and I’m not going to apologize for the amount of time that I spent in two countries and I’m not going to apologize for the fact that I speak two languages and I’m not going to apologize for the fact that I have two versions of my name.”
Not expecting to find herself in the middle of this sort of scandal, Hilaria went on as follows:
“It just feels like somebody wakes up and they’re like, ‘Oh, you! Let’s go after you today.’ I don’t understand that.”
She then explained that her words from a past podcast interview were misconstrued to “create a narrative because you’re bored and at home, or something.”
Did she lie to her famous husband about her heritage?
Never, Baldwin says.
“First thing I told my husband is that I was born in Boston,” Hilaria said in her video.
“I spent a lot of my childhood in Spain. My family, my nuclear family lives in Spain and has lived there for a long time…
“I was moving around a lot but I came here when I was 19 years old to go to college.”
“I’m really lucky that I grew up speaking two languages,” Hilaria said in another video posted on her Instagram earlier Sunday.
“And I’m trying to raise my kids so that they speak two languages too.”
Baldwin also went into some detail over the confusion regarding her first name:
“When I was growing up, in this country, I would use the name Hillary and in Spain, I would use the name Hilaria and…my whole family would call me Hilaria.”
Hilaria also clarified her ethnicity.
She said:
“I am a white girl. Let’s be very clear that Europe has a lot of white people in there.
“My family is white. Ethnically, I am a mix of many, many, many things. Culturally, I grew up with two cultures. So it’s really as simple as that.”
Alec Baldwin, meanwhile, also stuck up for his wife.
“We live in a world now where we’re hidden behind the anonymity of social media. People feel that they can say anything,” he said in a video of his own.
“They probably would like to do anything if they weren’t at risk of getting caught and going to prison.
“Because they can’t do that, because that involves real commitment to do something, to express those feelings, they say things, no profile picture very often, sometimes yes, no identifying features there, hidden behind the anonymity of social media, they want to just shoot it all over you and spray it all over you, their venom and their hate.”
Added the veteran star and occasional SNL cast member:
“You have to consider the source. There’s things that have been said lately about people that I love, that I care about deeply, which are ridiculous.”
Alec’s daughte,r Ireland, who he shares with ex-wife Kim Basinger, also came to her stepmom’s defense, sharing a series of Instagram Story videos and referring to Hilaria’s critics as “sad and pathetic” for digging so deeply into the life of somebody they don’t know.
This is what she said…
She is a good person.
She’s a caring person who has always respected my relationship with my dad and I have a great relationship with her. …
Hilaria is a wonderful mother who takes great care of her kids and she takes great care of my dad and that’s really all that matters to me.