Hilaria Baldwin has claimed she is guilty of no wrongdoing after being accused of pulling off a ‘decade-long grift’ to pass herself off as a Spanish person.
In an interview with the New York Times, Baldwin, 36, said the recent stories exposing her Boston upbringing are as a result of the media ‘misrepresenting me’ as she claimed she spoke little of her heritage so as to protect her parents.
The mother of five also spoke on the now notorious ‘Today Show’ segment in which she asked what the English word for cucumbers was, alleging she suffered from a ‘brain fart’ due to live TV nerves.
‘There is not something I’m doing wrong, and I think there is a difference between hiding and creating a boundary,’ she told the Times.
‘Today we have an opportunity to clarify for people who have been confused — and have been confused in some ways by people misrepresenting me.’
Hilaria Baldwin (pictured with husband Alec) has claimed she is guilty of no wrongdoing after being accused of pulling off a ‘decade-long grift’ to pass herself off as a Spanish person
Hilaria revealed the truth about her upbringing in a rambling Instagram video on Sunday, saying: ‘Yes, I am a white girl. I am a white girl. Let’s be very clear that Europe has a lot of white people in there and my family is white. Ethnically, I am a mix of many, many, many things. Culturally, I grew up with two cultures so it’s really as simple as that’
The downfall of Hilaria’s apparant grift came on December 21 when a Twitter user under the handle @Lenibriscoe began a thread in which she highlighted her faltering Spanish accent and revealed her New England upbringing.
‘We’re all bored and it’s just seemed so strange to me that no one had ever come out and said it, especially for someone who gets so much media attention,’ the unnamed woman told the Times.
Baldwin, 36, said the recent stories exposing her Boston upbringing are as a result of the media ‘misrepresenting me’
The woman said that it was an open secret in New York that she had an American upbringing, yet she wishes to remain anonymous over fears that Hilaria’s husband Alec Baldwin ‘would punch her’.
The actor was forced to take an anger management course last year after a fight with a man over a parking spot.
He has also previously been escorted from a plane after refusing to stop playing popular game ‘Words with Friends’ and turn off his cell phone.
Hilaria had initially denied the allegations stating that it was only ‘Fake Twitter accounts accusing me of a fake identity!’ yet was later forced to back down and reveal more about her Massachusetts background.
‘Yes, I am a white girl. I am a white girl. Let’s be very clear that Europe has a lot of white people in there and my family is white,’ she said in an Instagram video on Sunday.
‘Ethnically, I am a mix of many, many, many things. Culturally, I grew up with two cultures so it’s really as simple as that.’
Yet in her interview with the Times, published on Wednesday, she remained adamant that she was not guilty of cultural appropriation and that she had never tried to mispresent herself.
‘The things I have shared about myself are very clear,’ Hilaria said.
‘I was born in Boston. I spent time in Boston and in Spain. My family now lives in Spain. I moved to New York when I was 19 years old and I have lived here ever since.
‘For me, I feel like I have spent 10 years sharing that story over and over again. And now it seems like it’s not enough.’
Yet she could not tell the Times exactly how much time she had spent in Spain when she was younger.
‘I think it would be maddening to do such a tight time line of everything,’ she told them.
‘You know, sometimes there was school involved. Sometimes it was vacation. It was such a mix, mishmash, is that the right word? Like a mix of different things.’
‘When we weren’t in Spain, we called it “we brought Spain into our home”,’ she added.
30 Rock actor Alec had rushed to his wife’s defense when the barrage of social media comments began to come in this week questioning whether she had lied about her background.
‘Fake? Exaggerated? Appropriated an accent as an adult? She lived in Spain for many years as a child. She lived both places,’ he responded to a Twitter critic.
Hilaria said in Wednesday’s interview that she had never told her husband that she was from Spain, despite his now infamous 2013 Letterman interview in which Alec had claimed she is Spanish.
‘My wife is from Spain,’ the 62-year-old had said.
‘I walked by him,’ Hilaria told the Times of meeting Alec in a vegan restaurant in 2011.
‘He said, “Where are you from?” And I said, “I’m from Boston.” That was the first thing I said, that has always been my narrative.’
She also answered back to people who have criticized her for referring to Spain as home, especially as her new version of her timeline leaves it ambiguous as to whether she moved to New York from Spain as she has previously claimed.
‘Home is where my parents are going to be,’ she said. ‘If my parents move to China, I am going to go to China and say, “I’m going home”.’
‘These people who I call my family, I am learning in this particular situation, I have to say, “People who we have considered to be our family”.)’
Hilaria added that she believed herself steeped in two cultures through her family’s vacations there and that Spain had been a massive part of her father’s childhood.
‘He would go there when he was younger and created these deep, deep, deep bonds and it was something that was part of my childhood,’ Hilaria claims.
‘It was something my father introduced to my mother when they met, when they were pretty young.’
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