10 times Alec Baldwin lied about his wife Hilaria Baldwin being Spanish
10 times Alec Baldwin lied about his wife Hilaria Baldwin being Spanish
Actor deceived the sheriff investigating the ‘Rust’ shooting and the public
Alec Baldwin has said repeatedly that he did not pull the trigger and that his wife Hilaria is from Spain.
The gun lie caught up with him when the Santa Fe District Attorney charged him with two counts of involuntary manslaughter for the “Rust” shooting.
The long con about having a Spanish wife became a viral spectacle when white, American Hilaria gave a press conference in New York about Alec’s criminal charges and spoke in a fake Spanish accent.
Table of Contents: Click the list below to go to each item
Santa Fe Sheriff Detectives (2021)
Huffington Post (2012)
The New York Times (2012)
Spanish newspaper (2016)
“Hola!” magazine (2012-present)
Hilaria, 39, is really Hillary Hayward-Thomas from Boston, MA. Hillary/Hilaria has prominent and wealthy American parents. She has no Spanish relatives and has never lived abroad. She changed her name and biography right before she met Alec, 64, in 2011.
The Spanish scam was exposed by an anonymous Twitter user in Dec. 2020. The subreddit HilariaBaldwin* did much of the investigation that forced the mainstream media to admit fault. Yet, Alec continued to lie to the authorities, the press and the public.
LAW ENFORCEMENT
1) Santa Fe Sheriff (2021)
After he shot and killed Halyna Hutchins in Oct. 2021, Baldwin was interviewed by the sheriff’s detectives.
He told the criminal investigators: “My wife was born in the U.S. but raised in Spain.”
Baldwin said, “I always say to my wife, ‘I think I should get a gun. I’m getting a little nervous…’” Then switching to a Spanish accent, the actor told the detectives that Hilaria had said, “No, no, no, no — no guns in my house.”
After telling the detectives all about his six kids (now seven), he flipped into a Spanish accent again and said his wife told him: “Alec, we will not be having any guns in the house. No, no, no.”
Baldwin’s lawyer Luke Nikas did not respond to my email asking him about his client’s statement to the sheriff. I specifically asked him where Hilaria was born, how many years Hilaria went to school in Spain and what year she moved back to the U.S.
I cued the video below from the sheriff’s office.
AMERICAN MEDIA*
2) Huffington Post (2012)
Alec’s public deception seems to have started when his PR reps gave “Huffington Post” the exclusive story about his engagement to Hilaria. It (still) says:
Thomas, who was born in Mallorca, Spain, grew up between Boston and Spain.
The Huff Po story, written by the editorial director, was used as the source for every other media outlet to report on the Baldwins’ engagement. A look at archive.org** shows most outlets edited their stories in 2021 to take out Hilaria’s birthplace. However, a couple of sites still cite Huff Po’s reporting that Hilaria was born in Spain, such as Fox News and TV Guide.
3) The New York Times (2012)
The prestigious newspaper that prides itself on extensive fact-checking of its wedding announcements printed that Hilaria Thomas was “raised in Boston and Spain.”
While it doesn’t cite which Baldwin said that, the Spain spin almost assuredly came from Alec’s powerful publicist Matthew Hiltzik, who had been tweeting for months promoting the fairytale engagement. (His Twitter account is now private.)
After the grift was exposed, the NYT interviewed Hilaria and reported that her parents were left out of the wedding announcement because she wanted “to shield” them from “press attention.”
4) David Letterman (2013)
A year after he got married, Alec imitated Hilaria’s Spanish accent on “The Late Show with David Letterman.” The actor then says, “My wife is from Spain.”
5) “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” (2018)
Alec continued with his late-night show comedy routine for years. Fallon asked him, “Do you speak Spanish? Because I know Hilaria is from Spain.”
Baldwin: “I speak enough. I speak the right amount of Spanish.”
Then Baldwin asks Fallon if he speaks any Spanish. The host says no. “Because your wife is from Bakersfield, right?” said Baldwin. “She's not from Spain.”
6) Billy Bush, “Extra TV” (2019)
After Baldwin consoled Bush for his “Access Hollywood” Trump scandal in 2016, he says:
My wife is from Spain. She grew up in Spain. And our kids go to a full Spanish immersion school.
SPANISH MEDIA
7) Spanish TV News (2014)
At the premiere of his movie “Torrente 5: Operación Eurovegas” in Madrid, Alec was interviewed by a Spanish reporter. Hilaria served as an interpreter (video below.)
“It’s a real pleasure to work in Madrid. My wife and I love it here,” said Alec
The reporter asks a question in Spanish.
Hilary translates it as, “How did they get you to do this?”
“My wife grew up in Spain and in the United States and spent many years here when she was a child,” replied Alec in English. “Her parents live here now.”
“In Mallorca,” Hillary adds.
“In Mallorca,” Alec repeats.
According to the New York Post, Hilaria’s parents retired to Mallorca just three years earlier in 2011 when Hilaria was 27 years old.
8) Press conference in Spain (2014)
Baldwin told the Spanish media covering the movie’s release an elaborate lie about his wife and her family. They had been married two years at this point, so presumably, he had met her family.
My wife was born in the United States- in Boston. And then from a very young age, her father’s mother’s family – the paternal grandmother is from Spain…
My wife came to Spain and went to school for many years. She was educated in both places from a very young age – back and forth. Half the year in America, and half the year in Spain.
She obviously feels that both place are home. And she is very torn. Whenever she’s in New York, she misses Spain. And when she’s in Spain, she misses home. She has two homes, so of course that was a big factor in coming
No one seems to know if Hilaria and their first child came went to Spain while he shot the movie. Anyway, watch Alec’s detailed lie in the cued video:
9) Spanish newspaper (2016)
Alec was interviewed by the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia in a puff piece called “The Family Man” in 2016. He said of his wife:
She was born in Boston but grew up in Spain until she was 12 and at 15 she became a professional ballroom dance competitor, so at a very young age she traveled around China and the UK participating in exhibitions.
(I used google translate so to read in Spanish, click here.)
10) “Hola!” magazine (2012-present)
The popular Spanish magazine has published at least 20 puff pieces about the Baldwins over the years because it falsely assumed that Alec, a famous movie star, had married a woman from Spain.
The Baldwins were on the cover twice for “exclusive” glowing interviews. Alec called the celebrity magazine ”very classy.
The Baldwins were on the red carpet for the launch of Hola! USA in 2016. In this video, Alec asks the reporter if she wants to interview Hilaria in Spanish. His wife declines. He then says random Spanish words that he supposedly uses with his American kids.
When news broke that Hilaria was not from Spain, “Hola!” added a lengthy correction and defense at the top of all its stories before 2020 that says in part:
“…Hilaria clarified that she was born in Boston, Massachusetts and not Mallorca, Spain like her CAA Speaker’s biography previously stated prior to being updated. HOLA! USA’s original story published on May 4, 2018 noted that Hilaria was born in Spain and was raising her kids to speak her native language, Spanish.
Hola! then wiped its English-version website of all mention of either Baldwin before 2015. I can’t even find them on the Wayback machine.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Alec blocked me on Twitter about 10 years ago because I challenged him. So to see his tweets, I relied on the subreddit folks who shared links to the tweets in archive.org.
He tweeted so many times after getting caught lying about Hilaria being Spanish that I’m counting all of them as one event. (If you follow Alec on Twitter and can find tweets lying about his wife before 2021, please tweet to me so we can DM.)
One month after they were busted, Baldwin tweeted:
She lived in Spain and was raised in Spain for many years.
Again, he lied in Jan. 2021:
She lived in both places. Attended school in both places. She did not vacation there. She was raised in Spain and the US. (Jan. 2021)
Six months after even his wife sorta admitted she wasn’t from Spain, Alec invented a new version of the story (May 2021) and accused the other person of lying.
That is an outright lie. She spent half of her childhood there.
She took nothing from anyone. No jobs, admissions, scholarships.
You are dangerous and reckless to spread these things.
And you are the problem.
You subsist on a diet of hate-filled misinformation.
After the tweet that exposed the Spain scam, the media onslaught started.
Alec responded by posting a rambling 8-minute video on Instagram saying, “We live in a world now where we’re hidden behind the anonymity of social media. People feel that they can say anything.”
The actor called the backlash over lying about Hilaria being from Spain “ridiculous.” He said that “the majority of what has been said is false, spectacularly false.”
“You have to consider the source,“ Alec said repeatedly and trashed Facebook, TMZ and the New York Post by name.
He whispers at the end — as if no one can hear him— to insinuate he’s still lying. “When you love someone, you want to defend them,” said Alec. Watch below:
Two months later, Hilaria apologized in this Instagram post but did not say she was born in Boston nor gave any proof that she has ever lived in Spain
FACING A JURY
Alec is skilled at making high-risk, public lies. He lies to make himself look better. He continues to lie when he’s caught. He never genuinely apologizes. He will never change.
He said this on Instagram about the people who were saying his wife isn’t from Spain:
They probably would like to do anything if they weren’t at risk of getting caught and going to prison.
Now he may be the one going to prison.
Ten months later after his Instagram video, Baldwin shot and killed Hutchins. He is facing a mandatory five-year jail sentence for the top felony with a firearm.
The movie star’s lies about his wife may inform the D.A. and a New Mexico jury that lying under oath could be easy for him.
*I’m grateful to the “pepinos” in the subreddit “HilariaBaldwin” who helped me find many of these stories when I posted about reporting on this over a year ago.
**I couldn’t have done this story without archive.org to find out how media outlets edited their stories about Alec’s wife — without notifying readers. It’s an invaluable tool for investigations.
This post reminds me of Joe Biden’s lies. It used to be that being discovered as a liar was a black mark on a person’s character. I guess not anymore?
Thanks again Emily, for keeping this story active. I believe it definitely helped counteract his lies and also brought truth about firearm safety, and industrial safety. I don’t believe Baldwin will learn anything from this, if and when he is convicted he will shrug it of and claim he was targeted by MAGA or something. The entertainment industry has actually came out and said that.