Hilaria Baldwin on The Today Show cucumber video
Hilaria Baldwin in her "Today Show" appearance.
"The Today Show"/NBC
  • Hilaria Baldwin, wife of actor Alec Baldwin, has recently come under scrutiny after a viral Twitter thread brought attention to her history of misleading statements about her family background.
  • Hilaria is not from Spain, as many public statements led people to believe, but was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts.
  • Below you can watch the full “Today Show” video segment where Hilaria taught viewers how to make “authentic” gazpacho the way she learned in Spain. 
  • Hilaria speaks with an accent throughout the segment, and at one point appears to forget the English word for cucumber.
  • Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Hilaria Baldwin, the wife of actor Alec Baldwin, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to white American parents. But a recent Twitter thread of video clips went viral, claiming that Hilaria has spent the better part of the last decade leading people to believe she was from Spain.

In a now-famous video segment included in Twitter user @lenibriscoe’s thread, Baldwin appeared on “The Today Show” alongside Telemundo TV host Evi Siskos and taught viewers how to make “authentic” gazpacho. The video, which was uploaded on October 19, 2015, has a description saying Baldwin’s appearance was part of the “People en Espanol festival in New York City.”

Hilaria speaks with a pronounced Spanish accent throughout the six-minute segment, and at one point appears to forget the English word for cucumber.

“We have very few ingredients – we have tomatoes, we have, um, how do you say in English?” Baldwin says, turning to Siskos before remembering. “Cucumber!”

Watch the video below or on the “Today Show” website here (Baldwin forgets the word for cucumber early in the segment around the 20-second mark).

A bit later in the video, she starts peeling the tomato."I'm sure there's way fancier ways to do it, but this is how I learned in Spain," Hilaria says. "This is how we do it."

"In this country, I never order gazpacho from the menu," Hilaria says later on in the video. She says she avoids it in US restaurants because people here add ingredients like tabasco sauce, which she says isn't standard in her recipe.

"There's no extra spice," Hilaria says. "It's not something that's in the palate of Spain, we don't use these spicier sauces."

She uses "we" again later in the segment when referring to how people in Spain will serve the same ingredients that are in a dish in small bowls alongside the final product. 

In an interview with the New York Times published on Wednesday, Hilaria explains that she is fluent in both English and Spanish, and will sometimes mix up words in the two languages "depending on how happy or sad she is feeling." 

Hilaria Baldwin attends the HOLA! USA launch hosted by Alec & Hilaria Baldwin at Porcelanosa on September 29, 2016 in New York City
Hilaria Baldwin attends the HOLA! USA launch hosted by Alec & Hilaria Baldwin at Porcelanosa on September 29, 2016 in New York City.
Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for HOLA! USA

"She got confused about the word for cucumber because it was one of her first times appearing on live television and she was nervous ('brain fart,' she said)," New York Times reporter Katherine Rosman wrote.

Code-switching between languages is common for bi- or poly-lingual people, but what is striking for people watching videos of Hilaria is the way she speaks authoritatively about Spain and the country's culture as if it is her own. Neither of her parents or extended family are Spanish, but instead simply fell in love with the country and language. Her parents eventually retired in Mallorca in 2011. 

Hilaria told the New York Times she went to Spain "at least yearly" during her younger years, but declined to explain how often her family traveled there or for how long. 

To better understand the full scope of Hilaria's contradictory statements, you can read Insider's full timeline of Hilaria's public life, social-media posts, and interview clips here.

Read the original article on Insider