Did Hilaria Baldwin Fake a Spanish Accent?

If you've only recently rejoined the Internet after a phone-free weekend at a cabin in the woods, you may see a lot of chatter on Twitter about Hilaria Baldwin and her Spanish accent of undetermined authenticity. The conspiracy has now snowballed in a case, backed by an onslaught of evidence, that alleges Baldwin has been lying about her Spanish accent for years. Wife to actor Alec Baldwin and aunt to Hailey Bieber née Baldwin, the wellness influencer was first accused of fabricating her background last week on social media. Twitter user @lenibriscoe tweeted, "You have to admire Hilaria Baldwin’s commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person." This began a thread of clips and quotes that seems to support the claim.

According to her bio for CAA Speakers, Hilaria "was born in Mallorca, Spain and raised in Boston, Massachusetts." On the #MomTruths podcast in early 2020, Hilaria said, "I moved [to America] when I was 19 to go to NYU from—my family lives in Spain, they live in Mallorca." However, her old MySpace page states that Hilaria attended high school at the Cambridge School of Weston in Massachusetts, using the name Hilary Hayward-Thomas. Someone claiming to be a former high school classmate tweeted that "she had no accent, was archetypal northeastern prep schooler. we all mythologize ourselves, but her pretending to be ESL is a level of exaggeration that seems problematic."

Even more disturbing, her family's ancestral links to Spain remain to be seen. Her mother, Dr. Kathryn Hayward, has built a career as a Longmeadow, Massachusetts physician. A video of Hayward, who retired in 2012, speaking show that she has no accent, though a bio for eVirtual Summits says she lives in Mallorca, Spain. On Hilaria/Hilary's father's side, an obituary of her grandfather explicitly states that his famial ties to the United States "pre-dated the American Revolution," while her grandmother is from Nebraska, per this wedding announcement.

As for the depth of Hilaria's alleged lie, not only has she been heard in several interviews with a hint of a Spanish tongue, in a cooking segment for The Today Show, she seemingly forgets the English word for "cucumber," saying, "We have—how you say in English—cucumbers." In 2012, she posted a photo on Instagram wearing an España jersey with the caption, "in case there was any question about mi cultura upbringing." Her five children with Alec bare traditional Spanish names: Carmen Gabriela, Rafael Thomas, Leonardo Ángel David, Romeo Alejandro, and Eduardo Pau Lucas. She has also appeared in several Latin magainzes, including Hola! and Latina, though Spain is not a Latin American country.

However, other interviews and videos show her without a Spanish accent at all.

In response to the accusations, Hilaria took to Instagram to clear the air. In a video, she refers to herself as a "different kind of Bostonian," explaining that though she was born in Boston, she "grew up spending time with [her] family between Massachusetts and Spain." She states, “There was a lot of back-and-forth my entire life, and I’m really lucky that I grew up speaking two languages."

She goes on to say, "I think some people ask sometime about how I speak. I am that person that if I've been speaking a lot of Spanish, I, you know, tend to mix them. If I'm speaking a lot of English, or more English, I tend to mix that."

In regards to her name, she says that Hilary is the name she used in school, while Hilaria is what her family calls her. She continues, "Yes I am a white girl … 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 the two cultures. So it’s really as simple as that.

After her response was still met with critism, she posted another video continuing to tell her side of the story, “I’ve never said that my mother was Spanish, my family is a big mix of so many different things,” she explains. “My thing is about being authentic and when people say I’m not being authentic, it hurts my feelings."

She continues, "I don’t really understand why this is turning into such a big thing. I want to take it seriously, but I also don’t want it to be all of a sudden I’m apologizing for who I am. Because at this point, I’m starting to feel that I’m being attacked for who I am, and that no answer is the right answer.”