Hillary “Hilaria” Baldwin opened up about being accused of falsifying her past – insisting that it was everyone’s fault for assuming she was Spanish.
Alec Baldwin’s wife told The New York Times in an interview posted on Wednesday that she always hid her parents’ true story as Boston bourgeoisies purely in an innocent attempt to protect their privacy.
And she claimed that she was raised by a father with “such deep, deep, deep ties” to the European nation that, “When we weren’t in Spain, we called it ‘we brought Spain home’.”
The world then misinterpreted its innocent pronouncement about “returning home” in Spain, because they did not realize that “my home is where my parents will be,” Baldwin told the channel.
“If my parents move to China, I go to China and say, ‘I’m going home,'” said Baldwin, who was born Hillary Hayward-Thomas.
People were also very literal about their statements about the family’s roots in Spain, she said, saying she was just talking colloquially about family friends there.
“These people that I call my family, I am learning in this particular situation, I have to say, ‘People that we consider to be our family’,” she said.
The problem was compounded by her representatives at the Creative Artists Agency using unverified information from the internet to write a sloppy biography about her, which she didn’t know until the scandal broke, she said.
“It was very disappointing,” she complained.
Similar mistakes have led to magazines like ¡Hola! and Latina repeatedly calling her Spanish, including in cover stories.
Despite having posed twice for the cover of ¡Hola! – who has written about 20 items about her on her English website so far this year – she simply never realized the mistake because she never reads about herself, said the self-obsessed former yoga teacher and Instagram lover.
Even her most viral video – apparently forgetting the English word “cucumber” while speaking with a strong Spanish accent on the “Today” program – can be innocently explained as a “brain fart” while she nervously did one of her first major TV shows TV appearances, she said.
“Today we have the opportunity to clarify people who are confused – and who have been confused in some way by people who misinterpret me,” she told the Times.
“There is nothing I am doing wrong and I think there is a difference between hiding and creating a limit.”
The growing scandal has been “very surreal” because she has been “very clear” about her past, she insists on mistakes made only by other people.
“I was born in Boston. I spent time in Boston and Spain. My family now lives in Spain. I moved to New York when I was 19 and have lived here ever since, ”she told the Times.
“For me, I feel like I spent 10 years sharing this story indefinitely. 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 the first time she met her now husband Alec, who once told David Letterman that “my wife is from Spain” and also regularly imitated a strong accent Spanish when pretending to be her.
“‘Who are you? I must know him, I must know him’”, she remembers him saying when they met while she was speaking Spanish at a vegan restaurant in New York in 2011.
“He said, ‘Where are you from?’ And I said, ‘I’m from Boston’.
“That was the first thing I said, it was always my narrative,” she told the Times.
Baldwin said he visited Spain for the first time when he was a baby, and returned 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 in European culture that her strong accent and confidence in Spanish culture is not cultural appropriation, she insisted.
“Who can say what you are allowed to absorb and not absorb when you grow up?” she meditated.
“This has been a part of my life,” she said, “and I can’t make it go away just because some people don’t understand.”
She called it “extremely important” that people be “able to take on different parts of themselves and how they identify and make people listen”.
She said: “My intentions are that I am living my life and my life is created by my parents, my different experiences, my languages, my culture and, yes, my children have names very influenced by Spanish”.
Baldwin – who regularly posts intimate family photos on Instagram and has worked on TV since his wedding – insisted that he has a “right to my privacy”.
“People say, ‘No, you don’t have a right to your privacy because you married a famous person and have Instagram.’ Well, that is not true, ”she complained.
Despite their claims of innocence, old friends admit they are baffled by his transformation – especially by changing her name to Hillary.
“The whole ‘Hilaria’ thing is hilarious to me,” his competitive dance partner from 2006 to 2009, Alexander Rechits, told The Times.
“It was always her wish to be considered Spanish,” he said.
“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?”
The mysterious online Twitter user who started analyzing Baldwin’s background also spoke to The Times – but only after obtaining anonymity because she fears the famous actor Alec, who has already been sentenced to take anger management classes.
“It seemed very strange that no one had ever come and said that, especially to someone who gets so much media attention,” said @Lenibriscoe about Hillary’s wobbly Spanish accent.
Neither CAA nor ¡Hola! responded to the Times on allegations that the mistakes were made by them.