Hilaria Baldwin Taking Break from Social Media After Spanish Heritage Is Called Into Question

Hilaria Baldwin may have thought she was giving the final word on her faux feud with Amy Schumer over her post-partum picture with a video defending herself against body shamers, but that very video launched a whole new controversy — and Amy waded right back in.

Once again, however, Schumer has deleted her tongue-in-cheek jab, but at least this time she was posting a picture of herself.

Wearing a big floppy hat in the image, Amy had captioned it, “I get it. I went to Spain a couple times and loved it too.”

The two found themselves embroiled in a whole different saga when Amy jokingly shared Hilaria’s slender post-partum underwear picture claiming it was her. Even though Amy quickly took it down and apologized, Hilaria nevertheless took to her own Instagram with a video.

She even went so far as to tell Amy she had no reason to apologize — no idea if she still feels that way after this latest joke — but was instead taking issue with many of the commenters lashing out at her.

The problem for a whole different subset of fans is that in that video, Hilaria — who has claimed to have been born in Spain and be Spanish, had no suggestion of an accent at all. Suddenly, her whole identity and heritage was brought into question.

Suddenly, it started circulating that even her named had been tweaked to sound more Spanish and that she was actually a woman named Hillary who was born in Boston.

Evidence shared in a Twitter thread that has since gone private included footage of Hilaria struggling to say the word “cucumber” in English and her agency bio saying she was born on the Spanish island of Mallorca, something she reiterated in a 2016 interview with Hola!, as noted by Page Six.

Further, some claim to have interacted with former high school classmates of Hilaria’s who said her name then was Hillary Hayward-Thomas, “fully a white girl from Cambridge” and she had no discernible accent, per Uproxx.

By way of explanation in a seven-minute video (in her American accent) posted on Sunday before declaring a social media hiatus — she has been through it in the past week — Hilaria explained that she grew up in both Massachusetts and Spain, confirming that she was born Hillary in Boston.

She said that as her family — who reportedly moved to Spain permanently in 2011 — call her Hilaria and so that is the name she more identifies with. “We celebrate both cultures in our home,” she said. “Alec and I are raising our children bilingual, just as I was raised. This is very important to me. I understand that my story is a little different, but it is mine, and I’m very proud of it.”

As for her accent, Hilaria admits that it comes and goes depending on which language she is primarily speaking, and that she sometimes mixes them up when nervous or upset, which could explain the “cucumber” uncertainty.

She also said that while she is white, “ethnically, I am a mix of many many many many things. Culturally, I grew up with two cultures. So it’s really as simple as that.”

As for her critics, her message to them is to just leave her 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?” she asked. She has said she is raising her children bilingual.

“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.”

Stepdaughter Ireland was among Hilaria’s supporters, calling the whole controversy “pathetic.” Posting to her Instagram Stories, she decried anyone who “would want to play detective and dig that deep into someone’s life they don’t know anything about, don’t know how they were raised, don’t know who they were actually raised by.”

It’s just kind of sad and pathetic,” Ireland continued. “And also, it’s like the holidays, people are depressed, people are going through a lot. I know I’m going through a lot personally. And the last thing we really need to do is start shit and gossip about something is just so, so stupid. And about someone that nobody even really knows.”

Without commenting on any of the allegations directly, but rather the attacks themselves, Ireland concluded her thoughts, “She could be a malicious, terrible, horrible human who tears people down but she isn’t. Hilaria is a wonderful mother who takes great care of her kids and she takes great care of my dad and that’s all that really matters to me.”

As for Hilaria’s husband Alec, he also took to Instagram with a video of his own where he also did not address the specific allegations — or even specifically say he was talking about her — instead calling into question where this is all coming from.

“We live in a world where we’re hidden behind the anonymity of social media, and people feel they can say anything,” he said. “They want to spray it all over you and spit it all over you, their venom and their hate.”

“There are things that have been said lately about people that I love, that I care about deeply, which are just ridiculous,” he continued. “I would say the majority of what’s been said… is false. It’s so spectacularly false. And they’ve said it about people I love, false things.”

Later on Sunday, Hilaria had clearly decided she’d devoted enough attention to defending herself and announced through her own Instagram Stories that she was stepping back from social media “for a long time.”

“I’ve said my piece. I’m so tired. I’m going to go back to my family, because I’ve been not a very good mommy spending a lot of time focusing on this,” she wrote. “I just want to be left alone. I love you and I’m going to sign off for a long time.”

She followed that up with several photos on her IG Stories, so she clearly doesn’t mean she’s departing the platform altogether, but perhaps stepping back from posting videos in response to people coming at her for different things.

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