Kate Hackett
Alec Baldwin made a crack about Gillian Anderson’s accent and found himself in some trouble for it.
Hilaria Baldwin, Alec’s wife, has been in hot water herself over the last several months. She’s been accused of misrepresenting her Spanish heritage and faking her accent. Hilaria since explained that she was born in Boston and split time between Massachusetts and Spain.
In a video on Instagram, Hilaria said her accent changes based on her situation. She even admitted that it was something that caused her insecurity.
Hilaria wound up taking a bit of a breather from social media.
She has since returned and posted another Instagram post, explaining that she grew up “with two cultures” and was connected to both.
“My parents raised my brother and me with two cultures, American and Spanish, and I feel a true sense of belonging to both,” she said. “The way I’ve spoken about myself and my deep connection to two cultures could have been better explained — I should have been more clear and I’m sorry.”
Now Gillian Anderson’s accent is in the hot seat following her Golden Globe win for The Crown.
It may surprise some readers to learn that Anderson is not, in fact, British. She did get her start in the US with The X-Files, after all.
Anderson was born in the US and moved to London when she was young. She returned to the States when she was 11 and has, like Hilaria, split time between the two countries.
“It goes back and forth because I grew up in both places, so it depends on who I’m talking to. So usually when I’m talking to Brits, it slides into British, and vice versa for American.”
In an attempt at irony, Alec Baldwin piped in: “Switching accents? That sounds… fascinating.”
The joke fell flat and Baldwin deactivated his Twitter entirely then posted a video on Instagram railing against the criticism.
“Of course you can’t do any irony on Twitter,” he said. “You can’t do irony in the United States anymore because the United States is such an uptight, stressed out place and such an unpleasant place right now.”
Baldwin did not refer to Anderson specifically but commented that he was a “huge fan” and made the joke to “illustrate the point that multicultural expressions of anyone, whatever country, language, music, food, clothing, art, whatever of those expressions are important to you, that’s your business.”
“Twitter is one-third interesting posts,” he continued, “One-third tedious, uninteresting, puerile nonsense, and then it’s one-third, or more maybe, just abject hatred and malice and unpleasantness.”
Baldwin explained that the tweet was not meant to offend and said he would reach out to Anderson.
