Hilaria Baldwin responded to claims that she uses a fake Spanish accent by detailing her upbringing in a video
- Hilaria Baldwin, the wife of actor Alec Baldwin, addressed rumors about her background and Spanish accent via an Instagram video posted on Sunday.
- The yoga instructor and author seemed to address a widely circulated thread of tweets claiming that she uses a fabricated accent.
- Baldwin addressed that criticism, saying: "I am that person that if I've been speaking a lot of Spanish, I tend to mix them, or if I'm speaking or a lot of English, I mix that."
- She added that her use of English and Spanish "is not something that I'm playing at, so I want that to be very, very clear."
Hilaria Baldwin, the wife of actor Alec Baldwin, spoke about her background in a video that seemed to be a response to a series of widely shared tweets that claim the yoga instructor has used a fabricated Spanish accent.
"You have to admire Hilaria Baldwin's commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person," the tweet read, linking to a series of videos showing resurfaced TV news spots featuring Baldwin.
"I've seen chatter online questioning my identity and culture," Baldwin said in a video she posted Sunday on Instagram.
She stated that she was born in Boston and traveled "back and forth" between her home in Massachusetts and Spain, where she said many of her family members lived and still reside.
In the past, Baldwin has appeared to say that she was born in Spain. For example, in a resurfaced YouTube interview that aired in April for a series with authors and video personalities Cat & Nat, Baldwin said that she was born in Spain and moved to New York to attend college at New York University.
"I'm really lucky that I grew up speaking two languages, and I'm trying to raise my kids so they speak two languages, too," Baldwin continued in her Instagram video, referencing her five children with Alec Baldwin.
Baldwin said that she has felt 'insecure' about using both English and Spanish, and she used the names Hilaria and Hilary interchangeably growing up
"I think people ask sometimes about how I speak," Baldwin continued in her video. "I am that person that if I've been speaking a lot of Spanish, I tend to mix them, or if I'm speaking or a lot of English, I mix that, it's one of those things I've always been a bit insecure about."
The fitness coach and author of "The Living Clearly Method" added that she tries to "enunciate a little more" when she works, but she sometimes mixes the two languages if she gets "nervous or upset."
"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, but it's not something that I'm playing at, so I want that to be very, very clear," she said.
Baldwin added that while living in Boston, she used the name Hilary, and in Spain, she went by the name Hilaria.
"My whole family would call me Hilaria. It always kind of bothered me that neither name sounded 'good' in the other language, so I would use one or the other," she said.
She eventually chose Hilaria as her legal name before marrying Alec Baldwin.
"A handful of years before I met Alec, I decided to consolidate the two because there were so many documents that said so many different things," she said. "I identify more with Hilaria because that's what my family calls me. One of the things I love about what my parents called me is that it means 'happy' in both languages."
"I think we can all be clear that it's the same name and just a few letters different, so I think we shouldn't be so upset about it," Baldwin added. "Whatever you guys want to call me, I will respond to both."
"Ultimately," the fitness instructor continued in her video, "this boils down to this idea where this is a country of a lot of different cultures, and I think we can be different parts of ourselves with different people."
"I've seen some things about 'Oh, she's a white girl,' and yes, I am a white girl," Baldwin said. "Ethnically I am a mix of many, many, many things."
"I'm a different kind of Bostonian, and that's who I am, and you kind of can't change your background. Nor would I want to," she said.