It’s fitting that the most tragic year in recent memory ended on a comedic note with Hilaria Baldwin’s heritage scandal, but the Massachusetts native certainly isn’t laughing about it.
As we reported, Alec Baldwin’s wife has been accused of faking her Spanish accent and heritage after a Twitter thread detailed her alleged “decade-long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person,” prompting her old alleged classmates to chime in and assert that the 36-year-old did not have a Spanish accent when she was a teenager.
Related: Ireland Baldwin Defends Stepmom ‘Hilaria’ After Spanish Identity Scandal
Naturally, the mother-of-five is not pleased with being the center of such an absurd scandal, and she’s apparently very frustrated with the fact that people are calling her a liar. A source told Us Weekly:
“She’s completely upset that people are saying that she lied. This has been such a nightmare for her. She never in a million years would think of this as being harmful to anyone. The part that’s extremely frustrating to her is the contention that she lied when that is just not the case.”
Well, it’s impossible to deny that Hilaria (born Hilary Hayward-Thomas) fibbed a bit about her upbringing.
Earlier this year, the influencer claimed she came to the US from Spain in 2003 to attend New York University — however, she actually graduated from The Cambridge School of Weston in Massachusetts a year earlier, and the school lists her among its “Hollywood names.”
Yeah, that’s what we would call a grande lie.
And when you speak about your Spanish family, and moving to New York when you were 19 and having trouble with the language… of course everyone took that to mean she was an immigrant — not that she was born and raised in Boston, and that her parents retired to Spain.
Yet the insider went on to say that the yoga instructor is telling the truth about herself, adding:
“At the end of the day, she just wants to be treated fairly and wants people to know that she’s not lying about her identity.”
Hilaria tried to tell her side of the story in an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, going into detail about the ties her family has to Spain. Before her parents moved to the island of Mallorca in 2011, the podcaster said she spent years traveling to Spanish cities and embracing their food and local culture. But as many have pointed out — including comedian Amy Schumer — falling in love with Spain after traveling to the country does not, in fact, make one Spanish.
Here are Hilaria’s parents, btw…
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152618580985767&set=pb.679810766.-2207520000..&type=3
As the controversy continues to boil over, the insider said Hilaria’s actor husband has been “100 percent supporting her during this time.” He’s been very supportive on social media, telling one critic to “go f**k” themselves. He wrote on Monday:
“Just please stop insulting people who can see clear facts. She was born in Boston but grew up in Spain. You got it?”
Oh, we got it. Clearly, Hilaria fabricated parts of her life to seem more exotic — but did Alec know about it, or did she fool him, too? Share your thoughts (below).
[Image via Instar/WENN]