Oh, Hilaria Baldwin is at it again! This time, she’s defending her ever-changing Spanish accent by calling it “code-switching”—and, according to her, the whole world was just so mean to her.
In the latest episode of TLC’s The Baldwins, the Boston-born wife of Alec Baldwin made the case that her fluctuating accent—sometimes thick, sometimes nonexistent—isn’t fake, but rather a natural linguistic adaptation.
“You know what it’s called? Code-switching,” she explained, adding that she only recently learned the term because people were so mean to her when the whole thing blew up in 2020.
Let’s pause for a second here, because code-switching actually has a meaning, and it’s not what she thinks it is. It refers to when people adjust their speech, accent, or dialect to match the social or cultural setting they’re in—like bilingual individuals shifting between languages, or professionals adjusting their tone depending on the workplace. It’s not about adopting an accent for a Today Show cooking segment and then mysteriously losing it when the cameras are off.
And let’s not forget why this whole mess started in the first place. Back in 2020, the internet had a field day when clips surfaced showing Hilaria’s fluctuating accent—most notably when she forgot the English word for “cucumber” while doing a cooking demonstration. That’s right, the Boston-born Hillary Hayward-Thomas, who grew up with American parents and attended a fancy prep school in Massachusetts, momentarily couldn’t remember how to say cucumber.
Naturally, people started asking questions. Turns out, her entire Spanish identity was more performance art than reality. Her family? All-American. Her upbringing? Pure New England. The only Spanish connection? Her frequent vacations to Mallorca, which is not the same thing as being from Spain.
At the time, Hilaria tried to explain away the controversy by saying her accent “comes and goes depending on her mood.” Which, honestly, sounds like the kind of thing that happens when you’ve been method-acting your own life for too long.
And now, she’s trying to reframe the entire scandal as her being the victim. Because of course.
Here’s the thing—this wasn’t about people being mean to her. It was about people pointing out that she had been leaning into an identity that wasn’t hers, playing up an accent when it suited her, and then dropping it when it didn’t. And in a world where actual immigrants and bilingual individuals face real struggles with language bias and discrimination, Hilaria Baldwin playing the code-switching card just doesn’t fly.
But hey, this is the Baldwins we’re talking about. Maybe next week, Alec will jump in and blame this all on cancel culture.
