Fresh off the heels of her TLC reality show The Baldwins, Hilaria Baldwin is out with a new memoir that offers a brand new defense for why she can’t seem to keep her identity straight.
Born Hillary Hayward-Thomas to American parents in a tony Boston suburb, the mom of seven has come under fire in recent years for claiming to be Spanish and speaking with an accent. Her new book attempts to shed further light on the controversy by alleging neurodivergence is to blame.
On Friday’s show, Megyn was joined by Link Lauren, host of Spot On with Link Lauren, to discuss Baldwin’s latest excuse and why it is likely not going to help rehabilitate her image.
‘Neurodivergent’ Claims
Back in 2015, Baldwin went viral after she seemingly forgot the word ‘cucumber’ during a cooking segment on the Today Show. Speaking in accented English, she said “we have tomatoes, we have, um, how do you say in English? Cucumber.”
Soon after, The Daily Mail uncovered her agency’s website listed her birthplace as Majorca, Spain. It then came out that she was born and raised in the Boston area where she went to private school and her parents worked as a doctor and an attorney. Baldwin has since said she would visit Spain annually as a child, and her parents live there today.
In an episode of her reality show, Hilaria said she is “normal” for mixing English and Spanish and took issue with those who criticize her accent. “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,” she said. “You can try. You can chameleon. You know, people who code-switch we’re very good at chameleoning… and you’re not even thinking about it.”
And now she is introducing an excuse for the “code-switching” in her new book Manual Not Included. “Suddenly people were poking at me for how I sounded and how I code-switched. It all got out of control. There was a coordinated mob after me,” she recalled. “Another factor that made me very uncomfortable at the time is that I have ADHD and dyslexia, and these greatly impact my speech, my reading, my listening, my focus, my memory, and my self confidence.”
She described her brain as “one part English,” “one part Spanish,” “seven dollops a mom brain,” and “a heavy pour of distraction when I get stuck or go off on tangents and forget what I’m saying while I’m saying it.”
Baldwin wrote that she never spoke about her “processing differences” because she just tried to be normal. “I just existed in a land where sometimes I spoke one language, and sometimes I spoke another, and sometimes I mix them and got mixed up,” she continued. “Growing up being neurodivergent, I had to work harder in school than many of the people around me.”
Following the ‘cucumber’ incident, Baldwin said she sought professional help. “I took speech therapy to an annunciate better,” she wrote. “The more I got treatment for the ADHD that I was trying to ignore, the better I got at separating the two languages and not getting distracted.”
Ultimately, however, she chose to embrace her ‘authentic’ self. “I tried to improve myself in the ways the internet trolls had told me I was broken, and then I got to a point where I realized this is not helping me,” Baldwin added. “I am mixed up, but I am not bad or broken. And then Hilaria returned.”
Lauren, who noted he minored in psychology in college, was not buying it. “None of my professors taught me that a side effect of ADHD and dyslexia is actually having fake accents and personalities,” he said. “That was not in any of my curriculum.”
‘Famedigger’
Instead, he sees the book as a cash grab. “I don’t know what is going on with her. She is kooky,” he noted. “They are just trying to make money… She is doing a book. She is doing a reality show.”
To that point, Baldwin also devotes a portion of the book to whether she is a gold digger. Though she wrote that her relationship with her husband, Alec Baldwin, was built on “true respect” and not just “physical attraction,” she reflected on the “cruelty” from the “tabloid media and online trolls who tried to diminish me, labeling me as a gold-digging younger woman, someone who doesn’t deserve to be with him.”
She then offered her own theory on what a “successful” gold digger looks like. “If you were a successful gold digger, you have one kid, spend a few years with your husband, then get out of the marriage and take all of his money,” she wrote. “I can tell you that seven kids shouldn’t be in the gold digging curriculum, and I would probably receive, like, a solid D-minus for this choice.”
“Kids are expensive and a lot of hard work,” she added. “Gold diggers want maximum money and minimal responsibility.”
In Megyn’s view, Baldwin was after a different kind of “gold” when she met Alec. “She knows that she is only interesting because she is his wife. And let’s face it, he is one of the biggest stars in America,” Megyn said. “I think she is a fame digger. It is a different kind of gold. That is my own personal belief on her.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Lauren by tuning in to episode 1,069 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.