Fake Latinas: Hilarious “Hilaria” Baldwin and “Rosa Ramirez”
Hilary Baldwin nee Hillary Hayward-Thomas finally got caught pretending to be Spanish. I guess she decided that pretending to be Mexican was too déclassé and icky, so she decided to claim that noble European Spanish heritage. That way, she could casually be seen as a spicy and sexy Latina and be more attractive to everyone and possibly get work in media. Both of those plans worked. She married Alex Baldwin (that’s his real name) in 2012 and shortly after became a correspondent on television and made appearances on the Today show during cooking segments despite the fact that she’s not trained as a cook. Does this sound strange to you considering that Mexicans and Latinos are generally despised ethnic groups in the United States? Here, let me explain.
First, Hillary Baldwin’s lie was uncovered by @lenibriscoe on Twitter:
It’s basically an open secret. Anyone with any knowledge of Spanish people or accents would know that her accent is fake and tends to fade in or out depending on the situation. As an example, here is the now infamous cucumber video from the Today Show:
This video is of Jose Andres, celebrity chef and actual Spaniard. He’s been in the USA for about 20 years now:
If you want more of the story, please check out Leni Briscoe’s excellent thread on the subject that I linked earlier. There have been articles from Page Six, the LA Times, and the Daily Beast. And don’t get me wrong, I have zero sympathies for Hillary Baldwin and her deceived clod of a husband, Alex/Alec Baldwin. Zero. Not a single shred of this fanciful tale is believable. If you actually buy this story all I have to say is that I have a nice bridge in Asturias that you might want to look into purchasing. You can buy it for a song.
Why is this a problem? You know, aside from the fact that she is perpetrating a fraudulent misrepresentation? She is pretending to have a white ethnicity from Europe and faking an accent. Yeah, it’s really bizarre, but you can act like a clown in public and it’s not necessarily illegal to pretend that you’re something that you aren’t. Here is the problem. Even though Hillary is pretending to be Spanish, what she is really doing is pretending to be Latina. Most people don’t know the difference and if you say, Latino, they aren’t going to draw the line at Spaniards. Aside from playing up to the “hot and spicy” Latina stereotype to seem more exotic, which is racist, she is also committing cultural appropriation of the kind that involves stealing opportunities from members of an ethnic group that has traditionally been stigmatized and treated as subhuman when they aren’t being fetishized as sex objects. WHAAAT? How can this be? Let me tell you a story.
I’m an actor. My first manager told me that I should become a stand-up comedian because he thought I was very funny (I am) and stand-up comedians get cast. He said, “You could get a network show doing stand-up.”. If you ever wondered why so many actors do stand up, there you go. My second manager told me that I should change my name because I wasn’t fluent in Spanish. Pick a name that’s Anglo, make sure no one else is using it in SAG, and pass as white. I was too naive to realize at the time that both of these managers were right. The second manager was right because he was telling me that casting directors and other people in the Industry would never be able to see past my entirely Spanish name and would never try to cast me in roles that would be more mainstream. I would be locked into the stereotypical roles that Latina actresses, especially Mexican — same thing, are locked into for life: maids, immigrant mothers, hot spicy chicks, and prostitutes (same thing). This is exactly what happened. In fact, everyone’s beloved boyfriend Oscar Isaac did exactly that. His last name is actually Hernandez and he’s Guatemalan, but since he dropped his real last name, he was never typecast in that way. He did however lose a role because someone thought he was Jewish. See how it works? Real Latinos, even ones as hot and talented as OSCAR FREAKING ISSAC, have to pretend to be white to get cast as anything but a janitor. Hilarious “Hilaria” Thomas Baldwin Pinche de Franco e Basura just trotted her privileged little white yoga ass to Alec Baldwin’s house, affected a fake accent, and suddenly, she was castable. Muy authentico!
How does this relate to our dear “Hilaria”? Well, back in 2018, a well-known acting coach got in some hot water when audio from one of her classes was recorded by a disapproving student and circulated on Twitter and other social media outlets. You probably forgot about it. Her name is Lesly Kahn and in the recording, she instructs a student to lie and develop a Latina identity to get cast and to get representation.
KAHN: I can’t be the first person that suggested this.
YOUNG ACTRESS: Yeah you are. I get ethnically ambiguous all the time. I took a 23 and Me, and I’m 100% Ashkenazi Jewish… But yeah, no one’s ever told me to change my name.
OTHER VOICE: I 100 percent thought you were Latin when we came here.
YOUNG ACTRESS: And I get that. I’m Armenian.
KAHN: Fuck the Armenian, that’s not going to help you. The Latin could actually get you interviews for representation. Just the fact that your name is ROSA RAMIREZ is gonna get you a meeting.“Wear something fucking red. Wear some fucking sparkly earrings,” Kahn continues. “Change your goddamned name and let’s just do an experiment. You know what I mean? Just fucking come up with most Latin name you can come up with, and I mean I don’t know what we’re going to do. if they ask is she’s really Latin. I don’t know how we’re going to handle that. Maybe no one will ask. Aren’t we allowed to change our names to whatever we want to change our names to? And she already looks it. So stop admitting to being a huge Jew, ok? That’s not going to help you. Speaking as one, it’s not going to help. As a Jew, it doesn’t help. So just try it, and keep us posted, like the saga of Rosa Ramirez.”
Many people were outraged because it was a shockingly racist and bigoted rant where Lesly Kahn told her student to fake being Latina so she could become a successful actress. She was essentially telling her, an actress who admits she had “done nothing” in her career, to steal opportunities from other more experienced and deserving Latinx actors because she, a white woman, is more worthy of the opportunities that are obviously being handed out like candy to brown people who Kahn clearly has contempt for. Lesly thinks of us only as red blouses and sparkly earrings, easy to impersonate, and people who can’t really fight back. Basically, it would be like taking candy from some babies. She later framed it as an experiment that someone could document on Facebook for extra publicity. Look how clever we are, stealing a career from some stupid docile field hands who aren’t good enough to be artists. Suckers! Don’t you understand? I’m a white girl who can become whatever she wants. Who can have whatever she wants! Everything belongs to meeeeeee!
I’m not going to even let this make me feel bad. But then again, I’m an embittered failure of a pocha in every culture I’ve ever “belonged” to. But Ale Russian on Twitter wrote something full of the heart that I don’t currently have. You can read it at the following link. Alex/Alec Baldwin needs to leave her alone and I’ve pledged myself to harass him until he learns that his hot little Masshole is not worth defending.
Hillary “Hilaria” Hayward-Thomas Baldwin Tapas e Salsa de Paella was simply ahead of the curve. She changed her name and claimed a heritage, only the noble European version please — that wasn’t hers, to grab all that she could. A rich celebrity husband and instant fame and jobs in TV, lots of press, and a book deal.
There’s an article, unrelated to the current drama, back from 2014 that details Hillary Hayward-Thomas’ participation in a Latin Dance contest from the Daily Mail. She was working the Latin angle for a while since the Latin Dance contest happened back in 2008. She has been passing for a lot longer than you think.
Aside from accepting jobs from Extra TV, where she was a correspondent, and appearances on the Today Show that she was wholly unqualified for, she and her family with Alex/Alec Baldwin had a cover story in HOLA!, which is literally a Spanish language magazine. From ESpain.
She has done interviews in Latina Magazine, been part of listicles in the magazine on Latin stars: best dressed and was the celebrity attraction for the launch of Glamour Magazine’s Glam Belleza Latina magazine specifically for Latinas at Soul Cycle in New York. She was featured in the first issue. She never turned one of these down despite the fact that she knows she’s not Latina. You don’t get to pretend that this didn’t happen, mi Corazon. You cashed these checks meant for Latinas. You used the press that you got from this to sell yourself as a commodity and burnish your celebrity status. Maybe that’s why most of these articles have been deleted by the magazines that published them. In case you need a hand figuring out what that means, that means they know they got scammed and they’re embarrassed.
Thank goodness that Hilarious “Hilaria” strode over to her Instagram page to set the record straight! As usual in these circumstances, she kind of halfheartedly blamed the media for printing things that weren’t true and then “clarified” that she was indeed born in Boston. Guess what Hillary. If you were born in Boston, that means you aren’t Spanish. Even your CAA bio said you were born in Spain. I am breathlessly waiting for Hillary to blame her appearance and touring agents for spreading lies that she never said. Come on, get on the phone with CAA right now!
Outlets have been calling Hillary Baldwin a “Spanish native” for a while. If she’s so dedicated to the truth and it was all the fault of reporters and their outlets, why did she never correct them? Are you telling me that Alex/Alec Baldwin, who’s already told someone on Twitter to “go fuck yourself” wouldn’t be on the phone to insist that those evil reporters and agents take back all of their lies? That their PR reps wouldn’t have instantly demanded retractions? The answer to the question is that she was okay with the lie because she was the one who told it to them.
But really, Hillary Baldwin has said this herself publicly. On Twitter. To Alex/Alec Baldwin. I am of the opinion that Alex/Alec Baldwin totally believes in her story 100% and the reckoning of when he finds out he doesn’t have a hot Latina wife is coming. It’s going to be Biblical.
Come on Hilarious “Hilaria”. We’re not stupid. I know you think we are and that you are the most brilliant mind on the planet. But, no. Honestly, we weren’t really paying attention to your blanquita ass because, really, why? Being a Baldwin isn’t really what it used to be in the 90’s. But now we know. Follow along with me, so that you understand. I can’t believe you are making me defend some Euro colonizers, but here we are.
If you weren’t born in Spain, you’re not Spanish.
If you were born in Spain, one of your parents has to be a Spaniard for you to be Spanish too. Only a dumb and feckless American wouldn’t have checked to see if Spain had birthright citizenship. Spoiler alert: they don’t. So you could not even technically be Spanish because of your birthplace, which you already admitted was Boston, MA, so nope on that ploy too.
Your parents do not have any Spanish heritage that has been uncovered. If you can prove it to us, great. But so far, neither of them has even the slightest hint of ESpain to their lineage. They are Anglos whose family has been around since before the American Revolution. So nope on that one too.
You don’t get to identify as Spanish because you feel like it, your rich family took vacations in Spain, and you want to steal the advantages of Latinos. Spaniards aren’t even Latinos. Latinos are from the Americas. No, being born in Boston doesn’t qualify you for that either. Latinos are a mix of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and various European backgrounds, mostly Spanish, but some French and others. Don’t even think about it, Hillz, you’re not Native American either.
You really need to just stop. You’ve been busted and you should apologize AND drop the grift. Get Alex/Alec to STFU. I could go on and on about how every single facet of your delusional fantasy has been exposed ad nauseam. You have five children and a husband who clearly likes having sex with you. Stay in Nueva Jork, be quiet, and forget about all those prime Latina gigs. You’re not going to get them anymore. Oh and just wait, your hothead narcissist husband is going to figure out that you lied to him sooner or later. Ask Kim or Ireland Basinger what he’s like when he gets pissed off. You might want to get a lawyer. You’re done mi amor.
