Alec Baldwin doubles down on defense of wife Hilaria in ‘faked’ Spanish heritage scandal

Alec Baldwin has doubled down on his defense of his wife Hilaria after she was accused of misrepresenting her Spanish heritage and faking her accent for years. 

The actor took his latest shot at critics via Twitter on Monday night in response to an post about an opinion essay for People entitled: ‘Why the Hilaria Baldwin Scandal Is Painful for Immigrants — Including Me.’

The essay by Ale Russian slammed Hilaria – who confessed on Sunday that she was born in Boston, not Majorca, and that her real name is Hillary – for the ‘exaggerated’ accent she ‘appropriated as an adult’. 

Alec replied: ‘Fake? Exaggerated? Appropriated an accent as an adult? She lived in Spain for many years as a child. She lived both places.’

His scathing tweet came as Hilaria’s official agency biography was edited to remove any mention of her links to Spain. 

The 36-year-old influencer’s speaker’s page on the Creative Artist Agency’s website had for years misstated her birthplace, claiming: ‘Baldwin was born in Mallorca, Spain and raised in Boston, Massachusetts.’ 

But that line was deleted shortly after Hilaria revealed the truth about her upbringing in a rambling Instagram video, saying: ‘Yes, I am a white girl. I am a white girl. 

‘Let’s be very clear that Europe has a lot of white people in there and 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.’ 

The Twitter firestorm that prompted Hilaria’s confession dredged up new photos from her high school years in her hometown of Weston, Massachusetts.

A 2002 yearbook for The Cambridge School of Weston refers to Hilaria by her real name, Hillary Hayward-Thomas. 

Hilaria graduated from the $64,900-per-year school in 2002, a year before she claimed in previous interviews to have moved from Spain to the US to attend New York University when she was 19.  

Several of the photos show a teenage Hilaria dancing on stage in what appears to be a school production. 

The photos were posted on Twitter by a former classmate who reportedly told friends: ‘I’ve been waiting for this for years,’ in reference to Hilaria being unmasked as a Massachusetts native.  

The online frenzy over Hilaria’s heritage was sparked on December 21 when a woman tweeted: ‘You have to admire Hilaria Baldwin’s commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person.’

In the next few days several videos of Hilaria’s past TV appearances resurfaced showing her commitment to a Spanish accent, including one where she seemingly forgot the English word for ‘cucumber’. 

Yet Hilaria appeared to slip out of the accent last week when she took to Instagram Live to react to a prank post from comedian Amy Schumer. 

Several former classmates came forward to confirm that Hilaria was in fact raised in Weston, Massachusetts, by American parents without a hint of a foreign accent.

‘I went to high school with her. Genuinely lovely person, I recall, but fully a white girl from Cambridge,’ one wrote.

Another added: ‘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.’ 

Class ratios at the Cambridge School of Weston are six students to one teacher. The exclusive school lists Hillary Hayward-Thomas among its notable alumni, alongside Lion King screenwriter Jonathan Roberts (1973) and American Pie actress Jennifer Coolidge (1979). 

Internet sleuths were quick to uncover details about Hilaria’s parents, Dr Kathryn Hayward and David Thomas, who lived and worked in the US for years before retiring to Majorca in 2011, according to Page Six.  

While Hilaria has long described her mother as Spanish, records revealed that Hayward is in fact a fourth-generation Massachusetts resident who spent most of her career practicing medicine in Longmeadow.

Kathryn went on to become an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. She have birth to Hillary in January 1984 in Boston.

Dr Hayward’s father and Hilaria’s grandfather, Charles ‘Chuck’ Hayward, was born and raised in Massachusetts, as was his late wife Irene. 

Hilaria’s father’s family has even deeper ties to the US, having lived here since before the American Revolution. He was an active volunteer for the Beacon Hill Civic Association during his ’37 years living in Boston,’ The New York Post reports. 

Her parents also co-founded International Integrators in Boston.  

Hilaria finally came clean about her upbringing on Sunday telling fans she spent ‘some of’ her childhood in Spain and ‘some’ of it in Massachusetts. 

‘There was a lot of back and forth my entire life,’ the Mom Brain podcaster explained.

‘And I’m really lucky that I grew up speaking two different languages and I’m trying to raise my kids, so they speak two languages too. And that’s something very important to me especially having my family abroad.’

Hilaria added: ‘Yeah I’m a different kind of Bostonian but that’s who I am, and you kind of can’t change your background – nor would I want to – I’m really, really proud of who I am.’  

She also noted that ’44 people from Spain’ attended her 2012 wedding to Oscar nominee Alec Baldwin, but she hasn’t seen her family since September 2019 because of ‘the pandemic’.

The NYU alum and her 62-year-old husband gave all five of their children Spanish names – daughter Carmen Gabriela, 7; son Rafael Thomas, 5; son Leonardo Ángel, 4; son Romeo Alejandro, 2; and son Eduardo ‘Edu’ Pao Lucas, 3 months.

As for her name, Hilaria said she’d use Hillary in the States and Hilaria in Spain. 

‘My whole family call me Hilaria. It always kind of bothered me that neither name sounds good in the other language. So I would use one or the other one,’ she said.  

Her video sparked a flurry of memes with some jokingly comparing her to Rachel Dolezal and Jessica Krug. 

Krug, a professor of African American history at George Washington University, pretended to be black her entire career. Dolezal, a former NAACP leader, was unmasked as a white woman in 2015. 

Alec came out to defend Hilaria in his own video on Sunday.  

Without addressing the allegations directly, the SNL star said Twitter is ‘a lot of s**t’. 

‘You have to kind of hack your way through the debris of Twitter. Twitter is just a vast orchard of cr**,’ he continued. 

‘There’s things that have been said lately about people that I love, that I care about deeply, which are ridiculous. I mean, just ridiculous.

‘They’ve said it about people I love – false things. Untrue things. 

‘And as much as that hurts, the only thing I can do is talk to that half of the public or that portion of the public who understands what I mean when I say: “Consider the source. When you love somebody you want to defend them.’  

On Monday he posted a quote seemingly about the incident to his Instagram page which read: ‘A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its shoes.’ 

A video of Alec on The Late Show in 2013 emerged Monday in which he impersonated his wife’s ‘Spanish’ accent, telling David Letterman: ‘My wife is from Spain.’