A video of Hilaria Baldwin asking the "English word" for cucumber resurfaced online with social media users mocking the yoga instructor and podcaster. The video emerged amid accusations that Baldwin faked her Spanish heritage and accent for years despite being born in Boston, Massachusetts.
The video was from the Today show, where Baldwin displayed her cooking skills and, what social media users claimed, "faked" Spanish accent. In the video, she asked — pointing at cucumbers — what it was called in English.
"We have very few ingredients. We have tomatoes, we have, um, how do you say in English, cucumbers," Baldwin asked the Today show host at the time.
The nine-second-long clip went viral over social media, and netizens took the opportunity to mock the 36-year-old. The video appeared to amuse the netizens, who wondered how Baldwin — raised in Boston — forgot what a cucumber was called in English.
How Hilaria Baldwin's 'Fake' Spanish Heritage Drama Unfolded
Hilaria Baldwin came into the spotlight after marrying Alec Baldwin, who is 26 years senior to her. Baldwin, who has five children with the actor, claimed in various interviews that she was born in Mallorca, Spain, and raised in Boston.
In a 2016 interview with Hola! Magazine, Hilaria claimed that she made sure she taught her children her native language Spanish. She also appeared in multiple interviews speaking non-American accent.
However, social media users were left confused about Baldwin's accent after she responded to Amy Schumer. The comedian had made fun of Baldwin's post-pregnancy body after she posted a photo on Instagram. In the photo, the mother of five wore lingerie and held her newborn son Eduardo Pau Lucas.
Baldwin posted a video on Instagram responding to Schumer's joke. "There's like the whole thing of 'Oh, moms don't look like that' — some moms do. This mom does. And I am included in the inclusivity," she said.
However, the social media users noticed her American accent, a change from the Spanish accent that she used in interviews over the years. Following this, Twitter user Leni Briscoe and Instagram user Tracie Egan Morrissey started a thread detailing multiple discrepancies over Baldwin's Spanish heritage claim.
Briscoe and Morrisey posted Baldwin's video where she claimed that she arrived in the U.S. at the age of 19 to study at New York University. However, Baldwin's high school peers claimed that she studied with them at Cambridge School of Weston, a private high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Twitter users claimed that Baldwin's real name was Hillary Hayward-Thomas and that she was a "fully a white girl from Cambridge."
Hilaria Baldwin Addresses Discrepancies
Following the intense internet sleuthing and backlash, Baldwin responded to the allegations in an Instagram video. She admitted that she was born in Boston and not Mallorca as she previously claimed.
"There's some stuff that needs to be clarified. ... There's been some questions about where I'm born, I'm born in Boston ... I spent some of my childhood in Boston, some of my childhood in Spain, my family, my brother, my parents, my nephew, everybody is over there in Spain now, I'm here," Baldwin said in the video.
She explained that she grew up speaking English and Spanish and tried to raise her children bilingual.
"I am that person, if I've been speaking a lot of Spanish, I tend to mix them or if I'm speaking a lot of English I mix that, it's one of those things I've always been a bit insecure about," Baldwin said.
She also said that she used the name Hillary in the U.S. and Hilaria in Spain.
"When I was growing up, in this country I would use the name Hillary, and in Spain, I would use Hilaria and my family, my parents, call me Hilaria," she explained, adding that "it always bothered" her that neither Hilaria nor Hillary sounded good in both languages.
