One of the hottest teas spilled in 2020 was Hilaria Baldwin's fake Spanish heritage. Video clips of her slipping in and out of her Spanish accent were suddenly all over the internet. It was also revealed that the yoga instructor's real name is Hilary Hayward-Thomas and that she was raised in Boston, United States. Hilaria was born in Majorca, Spain to American parents who were only there on vacation. They have retired in Spain but they have 0% Hispanic roots.
After she was outed, Hilaria went on a 2-week social media break and returned with an apology which fans found deceitful. She's limited comments on her Instagram posts since. Recently, the mother of six also stated that she believes culture can be "fluid." It seems like the controversy just keeps getting bigger. But where did it all begin? Here's everything that led to that infamous Twitter exposé.
It Started With Hilaria Baldwin Being Cut Off From Yoga Vida
There's currently a subreddit dedicated to "Discussion of all things Hilaria Baldwin." The pinned post there details how its creator dug information about Hilaria and how it all ended up with a Twitter user named Leni Briscoe, the hailed hero of the community, to tweet all those videos and other proofs of Hilaria's fabricated Spanish background. The Redditor began by saying that they first noticed Hilaria after she married Alec Baldwin and started working as a correspondent on Extra.
"I had been doing a lot of yoga and working at a PR and Event Marketing firm during this time, and one of my coworkers was putting a budget together for a big Yoga event for one of our clients," they wrote. "I told her about Hilaria and coworker said YES great idea, so I called Yoga Vida to get Hilaria's contact info so I could find out what her booking fee was for the budget. Every Yoga Vida studio hung up on me. So I emailed them and got a reply back that they have 'severed all ties with her.'" The Redditor found it odd. They'd then begin to be more curious about who Hilaria Baldwin really was.
Hilaria Baldwin's 2013 Bad Press Led To A Deeper Background Research
In 2013, Hilaria was reportedly caught tweeting while she was at actor James Gandolfini's funeral. An article about it was linked on the subreddit post. It said that Alec's wife was allegedly posting "upbeat messages" while Gandolfini's family and friends were clearly in mourning. It upset Alec so much that in a series of tweets, he threatened a Daily Mail journalist who called his wife "insensitive." The It's Complicated star wrote, "[I'd] put my foot up your [expletive] ass, George Stark, but I'm sure you'd dig it too much" and "I'm gonna find you, George Stark, you and I'm gonna [expletive]...you...up."
The Redditor said that it also "rubbed [them] the wrong way" when Hilaria explained that she left the service early because she was feeling faint due to her pregnancy yet she was "in the same dress, clearly on her way home in the middle of the funeral to give her organization, Extra! the 'scoop' (on a FUNERAL!) and calling him [Gandolfini] 'Jimmy,'" the Hilaria Baldwin subreddit creator wrote. This caused them to feel weird about Hilaria that once they got her real name, they began to go on intensive research about her background.
They also noticed that Hilaria's accent had been fading for quite some time already. This led them to do more simple Google searches that uncovered details about her parents and a now-deleted DCUM thread, "the mother lode" as they called it, that had over 30 pages of proof that Hilaria had been lying about her being Spanish. They said that's where they first shared that video of Hilaria acting like she didn't know the English word for cucumber.
As the forum received more attention, the Redditor said that an anonymous user which they assumed to be Hilaria herself started to attack everyone in the community saying they're just "jealous of her wealth, her body, her 'fertility', her life and her fame." Since then, posts from the thread started to disappear until it was entirely down. It's what prompted them to create the subreddit. They said that Reddit can't be paid off so it's a good way to lead people to the compilation of amounting evidence against Hilaria's non-existent Hispanic roots.
Hilaria Baldwin's Fake Spanish Heritage Was An 'Open Secret In New York'
The Redditor also wrote that apparently, Hilaria's background was an "open secret in New York" which would explain the Twitter thread author, Brooklyn-based Leni Briscoe's bold move to spill all the details about the issue. They said that Leni "finally probably got pushed over the edge when Hillary tried to pony off the back of Amy Schumer, by saying she was being 'body shamed for being thin' in an obviously photoshopped picture to get her name and body in a thong in the press. This was probably the last straw."
The Twitter thread was published on Christmas which the Redditor said was the perfect time to do it since publicists were most likely on a break. It was the weekend, too and according to the subreddit founder, Creative Artists Agency (CAA) still had "born in Majorca, Spain" on Hilaria's bio until Monday which really heated things up. They said that CAA also didn't seem to advise Hilaria about the videos during those 2 days that the tweets freely circulated everywhere. "So that's it. Team effort," the Redditor said.