Hilaria Baldwin is not going to apologize for who she is or sit down and be cancelled after her accent and ethnicity were questioned on social media.
Last week, one Twitter user did a deep dive into the life of the 36-year-old yoga instructor and wife of Alec Baldwin, sharing links to her past TV interviews and citing her “Fake Spanish accent.” The person then questioned Hilaria’s Spanish roots altogether, noting that she grew up in Massachusetts and used to go by the name Hillary when she was a student. The thread has since gone viral, spurring much discussion as well as mockery.
In a video posted on Instagram on Sunday, Dec. 27, Alec’s wife of eight years got emotional while talking about the backlash. She addressed questions about her accent, saying, “If I’ve been speaking a lot of Spanish, I tend to mix them and if I’m speaking more English…then I mix that.”
“It’s one of those things that’s always been a little bit, I’ve been a little insecure about,” she said, adding that she starts to mix languages when she feels nervous or upset.
Hilaria continued, “I try to speak more clearly in each language. I think that that’s something that I should try to do but sometimes I mess it up and it’s not something that I’m like, playing at, so I want that to be very, very, very clear.”
She also addressed her haters. “I kind of want to say just leave me alone,” Hilaria said. “Leave me alone. I’m not doing anything wrong by being me and maybe that doesn’t look like somebody who you’ve met before, but I mean, isn’t that the beauty of diversity?”
The fitness expert refused to apologize for her unique experience, adding, “There’s nothing wrong with me and I’m not going to apologize for the amount of time that I spent in two countries and I’m not going to apologize for the fact that I speak two languages and I’m not going to apologize for the fact that I have two versions of my name.”