Hilaria Baldwin has always been an aspiring Spaniard – but she really put her foot in her mouth when she changed her name from Hillary, says her former dance partner.
“The whole ‘Hilaria’ thing is hilarious to me,” said Alexander Rechits, who danced competitively with the now celebrity fighter who practiced yoga from 2006 to 2009 to the New York Times.
Rechits, who knew the 36-year-old American wife of actor Alec Baldwin by his Christian name, Hillary Hayward-Thomas, said it was already clear that she wanted to portray herself as something she was not.
“I understand why she did it,” Rechits said in an interview published on Wednesday, adding that he considered Hilaria sweet and talented.
“It was always her desire to be considered Spanish,” he said.
“She had roots in Spain, her brother used to live there, she used to go there a lot, ” he said, referring to the fact that Hilaria’s parents now live in Majorca and her family would travel to Spain when she was a child.
“But Hillary is a very good and strong name, so why would you change that when you were born here and you weren’t born in Spain?” said the Belarusian native.
“I have a lot of Russian nicknames. But I’m still Alexander everywhere I go. “
Hilaria, who has no Spanish ancestry, has been criticized for allegedly misrepresenting herself as Spanish – repeatedly referring to Spain as her “home”, adopting a strong Spanish accent at times and not correcting numerous publications and even one of her biographies from the web who falsely say she was born in Mallorca.
For her wedding to Alec in 2012, she wore a traditional white Spanish headdress and waved a flamenco fan to her fiance at an altar in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, while the two exchanged rings with Spanish inscriptions and danced around Puerto Rican singer Luis Miguel.
The lifestyle influencer was forced to access social media over the weekend to recognize that she is a “white girl” who was born in Boston, originally called Hillary and went to high school in Massachusetts.