Hillary “Hilaria” Baldwin has said she was accused of falsifying her background – insisting that it was everyone’s fault to assume she was Spanish.
Alec Baldwin’s wife told The New York Times in an interview posted early Wednesday that she had always hidden her parents’ true background as bourgeois Bostonians purely in an innocent effort to protect their privacy.
And she claimed she was raised by a father with such a “deep, deep, deep connection” to the European nation that, “When we weren’t in Spain, we called it ‘we brought Spain home’.”
The world then misrepresented its innocent statement about “going home” to Spain, because they did not realize that “my parents will be home,” Baldwin claimed to the outlet.
“When my parents move to China, I go to China and say, ‘I’m going home,'” said Baldwin, born Hillary Hayward-Thomas.
People were also way too literal about her statements about family roots in Spain, she claimed, saying she only spoke informally about family friends there.
“These people that I call my family, I’m learning in this particular situation, I have to say, ‘People we’ve considered our family’,” she claimed.
The problem was compounded by her representatives at Creative Artists Agency using unverified information from the Internet to write a shoddy biography about her, which she was unaware of until the scandal erupted, she claimed.
“It was very disappointing,” she said anguished.
Similar mistakes led to magazines such as ¡Hola! and Latina repeatedly called her a Spaniard, including in cover stories.
But despite posing twice for the cover of ¡Hola! – who has written about 20 items about her on her English-language website so far this year – she just never realized the mistake because she never reads about herself, claimed the Instagram-loving, selfie-obsessed former yoga teacher.
Even the most viral video of her – seemingly forgetting the English word ‘cucumber’ while speaking with a heavy Spanish accent on the ‘Today’ show – can innocently be interpreted as a ‘brain fart’ as she nervously chooses one of her first big TVs made appearances, she said.
“Today we have an opportunity to bring clarity to people who have been confused – and in some ways confused by people misrepresenting me,” she told the Times.
“There is nothing I am doing wrong, and I think there is a difference between hiding and creating a boundary.”
The growing scandal was “very surreal” because she was “very clear” about her background, insisting on mistakes made only by others.
“I was born in Boston. I have spent time in Boston and Spain. My family now lives in Spain. I moved to New York when I was 19 years old and have lived here ever since, ”she told the Times.
“For me, I feel like I have been sharing that story over and over again for 10 years. And now it seems that it is not enough. “
In fact, her pride in her Boston roots was one of the first things she mentioned when she first met her now-husband Alec, who once told David Letterman that ‘my wife is from Spain’ and a heavy Spanish accent too. mimicked as impersonating her.
“Who are you? I need to know you, I need to know you,” she recalled that he said when they met when she spoke Spanish in 2011 at a vegan restaurant in New York.
“He said, ‘Where are you from?’ And I said, “I’m from Boston.”
“That was the first thing I said, it has always been my story,” she told the Times.
Baldwin said she first visited Spain as a baby and went back at least once a year, without discussing exactly how often or for how long.
Her family also spoke Spanish in Boston and immersed her so deeply into European culture that her heavy accent and confidence in Spanish culture is not cultural appropriation, she insisted.
“Who will say what you are allowed to absorb and not absorb growing up?” she thought.
“This has been part of my whole life,” she claimed, “and I can’t make it go away just because some people don’t understand.”
She called it “extremely important” that people “can come out as different parts of themselves and how they identify and make people listen.”
She said, “My purpose is to live my life and my life to be created by my parents, my different experiences, my languages, my culture and, yes, my kids have very Spanish inspired names.”
Baldwin – who regularly posts intimate family photos on Instagram and has worked on TV since her marriage – insisted she “has a right to my privacy.”
“People say, ‘No, you have no right to your privacy because you married a famous person and you have Instagram.’ Well, that’s not really true, ”she complained.
Despite her claims of innocence, old friends admit they are baffled by her transformation – especially by changing her name from Hillary.
“The whole ‘Hilaria’ thing is hilarious to me,” her 2006-2009 competitive dance partner Alexander Rechits told The Times.
“It was always her wish to be considered Spanish,” he said.
“But Hillary is a very good, strong name, so why change that when you were born here and not born in Spain?”
The mysterious online Twitter user who started the analysis of Baldwin’s background also spoke to The Times – but only after she was given anonymity for fear of the famous hot-headed actor Alec, who had previously been assigned to take anger management classes.
“It just seemed so strange to me that no one had ever said it, especially to someone who gets so much media attention,” said @Lenibriscoe of Hillary’s faltering Spanish accent.
Neither CAA, nor ¡Hola! responded to the Times about the claim that the mistakes were made by them.