Hilaria Baldwin Defends Her Accent After Facing ‘Mean’ Backlash

Hilaria Baldwin has once again defended her accent after people questioned its authenticity.

During Sunday’s episode of TLC’s “The Baldwins,” the reality star and wife of Alec Baldwin, claimed that she had to become a “chameleon” due to her multicultural background.

“Growing up in a way where you have multiple cultural influences on you means that you’re never going to be able to fit in. You can try,” she said, according to People. “You can chameleon. You know, people who code-switch we’re very good at chameleoning… and you don’t even think you’re not even thinking about it. It’s just normal. It’s just natural.”

The mom of seven alleged that she had to adopt the practice of “code-switching,” which is known as the act of altering the way you speak, dress and carry yourself to assimilate into various social environments, due to the criticism she faced.

For context, code-switching is historically undertaken by marginalized groups as a form of self-protection from societal biases.

“I had to learn about it because the whole world was mean to me, and so I had to learn it. It’s code-switching,” she said.

Baldwin then shared that she’s learned to “distance” herself from “mean” comments from fans.

“You never get used to people being mean,” she shared. “But you take a deep breath, and I think you learn to distance yourself from it, and so, you know, you just try turning down the volume in my head a bit… and I’m not gonna take it personally.”

Elsewhere in the episode, Baldwin juxtaposed “code-switching” with speaking to an elderly individual.

“If you ever talk to a really old person who cannot hear, and I’m gonna emphasize, I’m gonna speak slower,” she explained. “And you’re not even really thinking about it. You just start to do it.”

The backlash over Baldwin’s accent first kicked off in 2020 after social media users accused the star of faking her Spanish roots. Drama ensued at the time after people online uncovered that she was born in Boston, Massachusetts, with the birth name Hilary.

Baldwin previously addressed the criticism that she’s a cultural appropriator and falsifying her accent in a since-deleted Instagram post.

“I was born in Boston and grew up spending time with my family between Massachusetts and Spain,” she wrote. “My parents and sibling live in Spain and I chose to live here, in the USA. We celebrate both cultures in our home ― 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.”

Baldwin doubled down on denying being “inauthentic” during the premiere of “The Baldwins” last month.

“I love English, I also love Spanish, and when I mix the two it doesn’t make me inauthentic, and when I mix the two, that makes me normal,” she said, before adding that the controversy makes her “sad” and puts her in “dark places.”

She continued, “But it was my family, my friends, my community who speak multiple languages, who have belonged in multiple places and realize that we are a mix of all these different things and that’s going to have an impact on how we sound and an impact on how we articulate things and the words that we choose and our mannerisms.”

Baldwin added: “That’s normal. That’s called being human.”