Hilaria Baldwin is the wife of Alec Baldwin, and mother of their five children. Somewhere along the way she gave the impression that she was from Spain. Apparently, she said so on podcasts and in interviews. She spoke with a sort of European accent. She named her five children with Spanish names like Carmen and Romeo.
Now, the long knives out on social media as it’s revealed by enemies– this is like high school! — that her real name is Hilary Hayward Thomas, comes from Boston, went to high school in Weston, Massachusetts. If she were a criminal or a politician, this might matter. But it really doesn’t. Andy Warhol (real name Warhola, from Pittsburgh) taught all of his staff to change their names, make up fantasy backgrounds. Who cares? The whole story of people who come to New York to be celebrities is re-invention.
The facts: Hilaria’s parents live now in Mallorca, Spain where they run something called International Integrators. Her father, David L. Thomas Jr. was a lawyer at white shoe law firms in Boston for two decades according to his own bio. Thomas graduated from Scarsdale, NY High School in 1967. According to the bio, he graduated from Haverford College in 1971 with a degree in…Spanish Language & Literature! So that’s where this all started. He got his law degree from Georgetown. He got a job at Ropers & Gray in Boston, then Peabody & Brown. From 1994 to 2012 he worked for a real estate company.
Obviously, Mr. Thomas likes Spain and Spanish things. Hey, I’ve been visiting Provence almost annually since 1986. This does not make me French.
Mr. Thomas’s father, David Thomas Sr., was born in Ames, Iowa and died in Arlington, Vermont. He was raised in Nebraska, where he met his wife, and they moved to Syracuse. His obituary explains this whole identity mess:
“David became a GE traveling auditor for GE, traveling extensively within the U.S. and to Argentina on audits. A few years later, he took his family to Argentina to visit places where David had lived and worked, an experience which instilled in his children a curiosity about the wider world and inspired them to become proficient in the Spanish language.”‘
For some reason, these people like Spanish stuff. Ole!
Hilaria’s mother, Kathryn Hayward MD, was an internist at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Now Hilaria– she likes to call herself that instead of Hilary– and Alec– who by the way was born Alexander Baldwin– are defending themselves on Instagram and Twitter. I say, why bother? No crimes have been committed, and no money was solicited based on the idea that Hilaria was a Spaniard. I’ve met her several times, and she was just about as nice as she could be. And maybe she makes a great paella. There are worse things!
