What happened to Hilaria Baldwin and her accent?
On Tuesday, Alec and Hilaria Baldwin announced their reality show. The news elicited surprise, confusion, and jokes.
But another aspect of the baffling reality series news drew people’s attention: Hilaria’s voice.
In the past, her changing accent has drawn criticism and accusations of dishonesty. And the debate just rages on!
‘The Baldwins’ is coming in 2025
It doesn’t look like Hilaria Baldwins’ Real Housewives aspirations are going to become reality. So she and her family are slumming it on TLC.
Though The Baldwins is a working title, the series will follow Alec Baldwin, Hilaria Baldwin, and their seven young children. Their eldest (shared) child is 10, while their youngest is not yet 2.
Weirdly, the show’s announcement comes amidst ongoing news about Alec Baldwin’s legal troubles in the aftermath of the tragic Rust shooting. The trailer dropped just over one month before Baldwin’s trial.
The silly news broke on Instagram, where Alec and Hilaria Baldwin pitched the series to their followers.
Both Alec and Hilaria seemed to have a casual air, as the intro featured multiple takes alongside a montage of their children engaging in age-appropriate rambunctiousness. In other words, it’s supposed to be deeply chaotic.
Despite some grim circumstances (and the technical possibility that Alec Baldwin could potentially be behind bars when the show premieres), the video did garner a lot of positive replies. But then the debate over Hilaria’s voice took over…
“Will Hillary be speaking with a Bostonian or Spanish accent? Maybe every other episode she can switch???” reads one comment.
“Ain’t gonna work, pal. Ain’t gonna work,” declared another commenter. “Tell me again how Spanish your wife is. Like you told [David] Letterman, ‘My wife, she’s from Spain.’ On national TV. Zero credibility. BOTH of you.”
An additional comment mocked an embarrassing flub of Hilaria’s, writing: “How you say? Cucumber?”
What is this all about? Well, Hilaria Baldwin has ties to Mallorca, Spain. She has, at times, presented herself as a Spanish woman.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts as Hillary Lynn Hayward-Thomas, she is of English, French-Canadian, German, Irish, and Slovak descent.
Hilaria has in the past stated that she grew up in a Spanish-speaking household and that her family traveled regularly to Spain. Hilaria’s parents even moved to Mallorca in 2011.
Hilaria has faced accusations of ‘impersonating’ a Spanish woman
In 2015, Hilaria Baldwin appeared on the Today Show for a cooking segment. While making gazpacho, she seemingly forgot what cucumbers are called.
“We have, um, how do you say?” she said at the time before correctly identifying the fruit. She would later explain that she simply forgot the word amidst one of her first times on television.
The moment received mockery at the time. The slip of the tongue is what one might expect from someone who did not grow up speaking English, rather than from a woman from Boston.
In 2020, Twitter users began pointing out inconsistencies and allegedly deceptive behavior from Hilaria. This is when the public, at large, came to realize that she is from Boston.
Hilaria’s former talent agency’s website listed her birthplace as Mallorca. And in 2019, Hilaria stated on a podcast that her family had not moved to the United States until college. Notably, some of her former high school classmates who remembered her in Boston found that claim perplexing. Another accidental misstatement?
Hilaria Baldwin now speaks with an American accent
Though HIlaria defended her past statements, insisting that she felt like the child of two cultures because of her upbringing, she did at times sound apologetic. Of course, at other times, she sounded defensive.
Following the controversy, she has begun speaking in public with a more traditional American accent.
In the teaser video for The Baldwins, Hilaria speaks in an American accent. This came as a surprise to people who have heard some of her previous public appearances.
