Over the weekend, Alec Baldwin’s influencer wife Hilaria Baldwin was slammed for once again using one of the couple’s seven young children to get publicity, this time by promoting their 11-year-old daughter as a skincare visionary who has co-authored a book filled with her own recipes for “natural” beauty products.
But critics of the Baldwins’ attention-seeking ways can take heart from a new report that revives Hilaria Baldwin’s Spanish “culture appropriation” scandal from 2020. That report comes from the satirical news site The Onion, which has published a scathing faux news story, headlined “Hilaria Baldwin Deported.”
“In a stunning end to the 40-year-old media personality’s rise to fame, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed Monday that Hilaria Baldwin had been deported to Spain,” the story begins.
The story touches on some real elements of the Hilaria and Alec Baldwin saga, including how the couple have been preparing to star in a TLC reality show about their hectic family life with so many young children. Doing reality TV has been seen as a come-down for Baldwin, a long acclaimed, Emmy-winning TV and film actor. However, the 66-year-old “SNL” star has complained that his career options have been limited since he was involved in the fatal 2021 shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of his Western film “Rust.”
The Onion piece humorously suggests that the reality TV show may be a no-go since Hilaria Baldwin was “taken into custody” during a raid on the couple’s Greenwich Village penthouse and “put on a repatriation flight at New York’s Kennedy Airport.”
The satirical article then touches on some of the most memorable details of the former yoga instructor’s bizarre but strangely entertaining Spanish heritage scandal. In late 2020, social media users revealed a decade’s worth of instances in which the Boston-born Hillary Hayward-Thomas spoke in a Spanish accent in TV interviews or obliquely referred to herself as being from Mallorca, Spain, and coming to the United States to study at New York University.
The Onion quoted an “ICE spokesperson” who said: “Hilaria Baldwin has publicly stated that she moved to the United States in 2003 to attend college, and because there is no record of her obtaining a visa, we believe she has been illegally living and working in this country ever since.”
The “spokesperson” also said that agents seized what they “presumed was a fraudulent birth certificate,” identifying her as Hillary Lynn Hayward-Thomas and listing her birthplace as Boston. The spokesperson added: “Though in recent years she has begun posing as an American, she has on numerous earlier occasions admitted she is Spanish.”
“Even as she spoke to our agents, Baldwin kept switching back and forth between American and Spanish accents,” the spokesperson continued. “She was clearly faking it.”
The Onion writer also “interviewed” residents of their building who complained about the noise coming from the Baldwins’ penthouse and who noted that she often would stumble “over basic English words.” Hilaria Baldwin was notoriously caught on tape doing a “Today” show cooking demonstration for gazpacho and searching for the word for cucumber. She actually asked in the segment, “How you say in English? Cucumber?”
One “neighbor” wondered if the Spanish Hilaria Baldwin gave birth to so many kids in the hopes of securing a foothold in America. “That marriage is clearly a sham,” the “neighbor said. “I can only imagine how she must have thrown herself at that man, hoping it would land her a green card. Why else would an attractive young woman like her want to be with someone that old?”
Ouch.
The Onion also took a swipe at Baldwin’s involvement in the “Rust” tragedy, saying that New York’s child protective services took the couple’s seven children, who all have Spanish-inspired first names, into custody. A representative for the agency “confirmed they could not be left in the care of their father, who shot and killed a woman in New Mexico.”
But, of course, in real life, Hilaria Baldwin isn’t being deported. Instead, she turned up on Instagram over the weekend, sharing a photo of herself with her 11-year-old daughter Carmen on the cover of a new book she says they collaborated on, “Glowing Up: Recipes to Rock Your Natural Beauty.”
“If your child is like ours, skincare is an obsession,” Hilaria Baldwin began her caption. She said Carmen likes to make her own skincare products in the kitchen and told fans that the book is available for pre-order.
Alec Baldwin chimed in with his approval of the book project, writing below her caption, “I’m proud of you two.” Other fans thought it was fun to see a mother and daughter sharing in such a project.
But many others asked what an 11-year-old girl needs with special beauty products or why anyone should trust a child’s skincare recommendations. Still others despaired over the way that the Baldwins seem to be pushing their daughter “into an adult world” of social media and of commodifying one’s appearance. A number said that Carmen was made up to look much older than 11.
“We are becoming a nation of Kardashians. Sad,” one person said. “This is so wrong on so many levels.. do better ‘mom,’” another person said.
And, as with The Onion piece, someone also reminded Hilaria Baldwin of her great scandal: “Are there recipes w/…how u say, cucumbers?”
