Hilaria Baldwin has finally addressed backlash over her accent, saying "the whole world was mean to me."
Baldwin came under scrutiny back in 2020, after videos were shared on social media showing her slipping between a Spanish and English accent, with many accusing her of faking her accent and her heritage.
Baldwin spoke out on the controversy on Sunday's episode of "The Baldwins," reflecting on how she learned to change her accent long before she came under fire for it.
"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, according to People. "You can chameleon. You know, people who code-switch we're very good at chameleoning.
"And you don't even think you're not even thinking about it. It's just normal. It's just natural."
Speaking with a friend of her daughter Carmen Gabriela in the show, Baldwin likened the experience of "code-switching" — adjusting one's speech or behavior to align with social expectations — to speaking with an elderly person.
"They say that it's like communication, if you ever talk to a really old person who cannot hear, and I'm gonna emphasize, I'm gonna speak slower," she said. "And you're not even really thinking about it. You just start to do it."
She continued: "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 2020, giving weight to claims that Baldwin had been faking her accent, TheWrap highlighted several incidents in which she switches between English and Spanish accents.
This is most evident in a 2012 ABC interview in which the start of her sentences had a distinct English accent.
The outlet also pointed to an NBC "Today" cooking segment in which she forgets the English word for "cucumber," and a 2018 interview with "Today" in which has lost her accent completely.
Baldwin reflected on the convroversy in a conffesional on Sunday's show.
"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 said. "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."