Hilaria Baldwin grew up as Hillary Hayward-Thomas in a suburb outside of Boston, Massachusetts, but insisted for years that she was from Spain. The controversy surrounding her New England upbringing cycled through the headlines quickly in 2020 (there was a lot going on that year), but it seems that the scandal is resurfacing ahead of her TLC reality show premiere with her husband, Alec Baldwin.
Now, a video obtained by the Daily Mail shows that Hilaria might be still leaning into her alleged Spanish narrative again. Dressed festively for the holiday in a black-and-red plaid onesie, the 40-year-old yoga instructor was cooking in her kitchen with a friend, sharing a childhood recipe for a “traditional” Spanish tortilla. Of course, it’s her sliding in and out of Spanish and English that has the internet befuddled yet again.
“I learned this when I was a kid, don’t look it up online because you’ll learn something different,” Hilaria told the camera. She then dices some potatoes, the secret to the recipe, and reminds her pal not to cut them “too tiny.” Then the onions enter the chat, and her Spanglish becomes an issue. “My husband hates… cebollas,” she claims while forgetting the English word for “onions.”
This scenario might sound familiar because in 2015 during a Today show appearance, Hilaria “forgot” the English word for “cucumber.” During the cooking segment, she said, “We have very few ingredients. We have tomatoes, we have, um, how do you say in English? Cucumber!”
When Hilaria married Alec in 2012, the couple leaned all the way into her Spanish culture. A 2014 Elle interview noted her alleged heritage: “Hilaria (pronounced without the H) is half Spanish, and she grew up between Boston and Spain, taking dance lessons from age two and doing Jane Fonda workout videos with her mother.” She claimed to be born in Mallorca, but she was really born in Boston. Her parents moved to Mallorca in 2011, long after Hilaria was out of their house.
She defended herself in a now-deleted Instagram post, via The Cut, when the scandal came to light during the pandemic in December 2020. Hilaria explained to her followers that she was “born in Boston,” but was “a different kind of Bostonian,” who spent “some of [her] childhood in Spain.” The video goes on to share that she “grew up speaking two languages,” and when she gets “nervous or upset” she often mixes the two languages up.
As for her name? Well, it’s just spelling, she told her fans. “My parents, they call me Hilaria, my whole family calls me Hilaria,” the mother of seven continued. “It’s the same name, just a few letters different, so I think we shouldn’t be so upset about it and whatever you guys want to call me, I will respond to both.”
The scandal didn’t seem to faze Alec one bit either. He’s no stranger to controversy and he sided with his wife and continued to call her “Hilaria.” With their reality show, The Baldwins, premiering in 2025, it’s going to be hard for her to avoid the questions about her background — especially if Hilaria continues to speak with a Spanish accent.
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