Hilaria Baldwin reflects on accent controversy: 'The whole world was mean to me'

Hilaria Baldwin opened up about her experiences of "code-switching" during the latest episode of The Baldwins.

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Hilaria Baldwin has addressed the backlash she received amid her accent and identity scandal.

In 2020, the Boston-born yoga instructor - who has been married to Alec Baldwin since 2012 - was accused of cultural appropriation for speaking with a Spanish accent. It was also revealed that her birth name was Hillary Hayward-Thomas.

Later, Hilaria claimed her changing voice was a result of her spending time in both Spain and the U.S. when she was growing up.

And during the latest episode of reality TV show The Baldwins that aired on Sunday, the mother-of-seven described how she learned to "code-switch" long before the controversy.

"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. "You can chameleon. You know, people who code-switch we're very good at chameleon-ing and you don't even think you're not even thinking about it. It's just normal. It's just natural."

While speaking to the older sister of one of her daughter Carmen's friends who had lived in both the U.K. and America, Hilaria compared her experience of "code-switching" - the practice of shifting from one linguistic code to another due to the context or setting - to that of speaking to an elderly person.

"They say that it's like communication, if you ever talk to a really old person who cannot hear... I'm gonna emphasise, I'm gonna speak slower," the 41-year-old explained. "And you're not even really thinking about it. You just start to do it. You know what it's called? Code-switching... 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."

In a confessional, Hilaria also insisted she tries not to take the criticism "personally".

"Being in, the spotlight, as people like to call it. People say, 'Oh, don't you get used to it?' No, you don't get used to it," she noted. "You never get used to people being mean. 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."

In an earlier interview for The Baldwins, Hilaria admitted the scandal put her in a "dark place" for a while, but she had since decided that a changing accent "makes me normal".

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