Woman who ‘exposed’ Hilaria Baldwin’s ‘Spanish grift’ says she should own what she did
EXCLUSIVE: ‘She should own what she did’: Woman who ‘exposed’ Hilaria’s ‘Spanish grift’ – a white Vassar grad – says she was offended by Baldwin ‘taking opportunities from genuine Hispanics’
- The woman who started the debate about Hilaria Baldwin’s Spanish roots has said that she should ‘own what she did,’ exclusively speaking to DailyMail.com
- The woman posts under the Twitter handle @lenibriscoe and posted the tweet on December 21st out of boredom
- The tweet went viral and led to people finding examples of Baldwin using a Spanish accent, a jarring contrast to her childhood in Boston
- She said: ‘When it got bigger I thought it was embarrassing for the Baldwins’
- ‘People were asking me don’t you have anything better to do and the answer is: no I don’t. It’s a pandemic, it’s cold outside and I don’t celebrate Christmas’
- Briscoe, who lives in New York, explained: ‘It’s offensive and wrong to pretend you’re an immigrant and that you speak English as a second language’
- She added: ‘It’s not really necessary. She could be a hot white influencer. Plenty of people do that’
- When asked what she would say to Hilaria, she said: ‘I would say she should say sorry to all the immigrants and English second language learners and moms of color who are actually mistaken for their children’s nannies’
The woman who started the debate about Hilaria Baldwin’s Spanish roots has said that the influencer should ‘own what she did’.
The woman, who posts under the Twitter handle @lenibriscoe, said that the influencer and yoga teacher isn’t coming clean despite posting videos to Instagram and doing an interview with the New York Times.
Briscoe – who herself is white and attended elite liberal arts college Vassar in New York – said that Baldwin was ‘offensive and wrong’ to falsely claim she was from Spain because she was taking opportunities from people who really do have Hispanic roots.
In her first interview, Briscoe told DailyMail.com she had few regrets and posted the tweet on December 21st out of boredom.
Briscoe, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: ‘People were asking me don’t you have anything better to do and the answer is: no I don’t.
‘It’s a pandemic, it’s cold outside and I don’t celebrate Christmas.’
The woman who started the debate about Hilaria Baldwin’s Spanish roots has said that she should ‘own what she did’
The woman, who posts under the Twitter handle @lenibriscoe, said that the influencer and yoga teacher isn’t coming clean despite posting videos to Instagram and doing an interview with the New York Times
‘Yes, I am a white girl. I am a white girl,’ the 36-year-old influencer admitted after backlash. ‘Let’s be very clear that Europe has a lot of white people in there and my family is white. Ethnically, I am a mix of many, many, many things’
Baldwin and her husband Alec Baldwin have spent their Christmas under intense scrutiny since Briscoe’s Tweet set off a firestorm on social media.
The Tweet said: ‘You have to admire Hilaria Baldwin’s commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person.’
It was liked 20,000 times and led to dozens of people finding examples of Baldwin using a Spanish accent, a jarring contrast to her childhood in Boston where she was known as Hillary and considered white by her classmates.
Briscoe, who lives in New York, said that she fired off the Tweet because she is ‘locked inside’ during the pandemic.
There was not one particular thing that Baldwin did which set her off but Briscoe said that ‘my friends have taken her yoga class in New York and her accent has been really consistent (Spanish).’
She added: ‘It’s offensive and wrong to pretend you’re an immigrant and that you speak English as a second language and appropriate the actual experience that actual immigrant women have. That’s not what happened.
‘She made a post saying people at the park think she’s the nanny because her kids are blonde and have blue eyes. That is something that happens to moms of color who actually have an accent.
‘That’s offensive, these are hard experiences that people actually have and she pretended. It’s not really necessary. She could be a hot white influencer. Plenty of people do that.’
Briscoe said that Baldwin was taking up opportunities that should have been given to people who really do have Hispanic roots. With limited space on TV shows and in magazines, those chances should have gone to somebody else rather than a white person
Briscoe said: ‘She made a post saying people at the park think she’s the nanny because her kids are blonde and have blue eyes. That is something that happens to moms of color who actually have an accent. That’s offensive, these are hard experiences that people actually have and she pretended. It’s not really necessary. She could be a hot white influencer. Plenty of people do that’
Briscoe said that Baldwin was taking up opportunities that should have been given to people who really do have Hispanic roots. With limited space on TV shows and in magazines, those chances should have gone to somebody else rather than a white person.
Briscoe said: ‘When I started I didn’t realize she’d been impersonating a [Spaniard] and other people found articles where she talked about [Spanish] culture. That makes it worse to me.’
When Briscoe sent the Tweet she thought that ‘nothing that much’ would happen and that ‘maybe people would talk about it on Twitter and it would be funny.’
She said: ‘That was until they made those response videos and they didn’t really help now, did they?’
In her video Baldwin admitted ‘yes I am a white girl’ while Alec filmed his own video berating critics and comparing Briscoe to a used bar coaster.
Briscoe fired back on Twitter: ‘Did Alec Baldwin just call me basura (trash) and compare me to QAnon sir this is not that.’
After that Briscoe’s notifications went ‘completely out of control’ and her followers rocketed from 1,700 to 8,200.
She said: ‘The first couple of articles on NBC were very pro Hillary, like Hilaria fires back, just the tone seemed very corporate synergy given Alec Baldwin is on (NBC show) 30 Rock.
‘When it got bigger I thought it was embarrassing for the Baldwins.
‘People were asking me don’t you have anything better to do and the answer is no I don’t, It’s a pandemic, it’s cold outside and I don’t celebrate Christmas.
‘If I were that rich I’d have something better to do.’
Hilaria, who was born Hillary Hayward-Thomas, is seen in a yearbook photo from the Cambridge School of Weston and is listed as a senior in 2002
Internet sleuths were quick to uncover details about Hilaria’s parents, Dr Kathryn Hayward and David Thomas, left, who worked in the US for years before retiring to Majorca in 2011. Hilaria’s brother Jeremy (right) married a Spanish woman and they all live in Spain
DailyMail.com can reveal that she grew up in this 100-year-old $4million house in the heart of the most desirable district in Boston called Beacon Hill
Briscoe revealed that she had been inundated with messages since her original Tweet, some of which were not kind.
She said: ‘Some people said I did it because I’m jealous and uglier. I don’t care if I’m uglier. It seems like a lot of work to look like her.’
Briscoe kept up her running commentary on Twitter, at one point writing: ‘Please do not ask me to expose Meghan Markle. There is nothing to expose. It is already public information that her husband is a Nazi cosplayer that uses racial slurs.’
Briscoe said that she ‘feels some responsibility’ for the social media storm and that a lot of people have ‘reached out to me to try and direct the conversation.’
She said: ‘In this case it was funny but social media can be really cruel and harmful when there’s a pile on when someone does something that people don’t like. I don’t think that’s great.
‘In this case people were saying some cruel and unnecessary things. That bothered me. There are so many things you could criticize Hillary Baldwin for, it’s not necessary to make fun of how many kids she has, that was really offensive to me.’
In her video Baldwin admitted ‘yes I am a white girl’ while Alec filmed his own video berating critics and comparing Briscoe to a used bar coaster. Briscoe fired back on Twitter: ‘Did Alec Baldwin just call me basura (trash) and compare me to QAnon sir this is not that’
Hilaria Baldwin (left), who was recently called out for presenting herself as a Spanish person, appeared on a cooking segment where she seemingly forgot the English word for ‘cucumber’
She added: ‘It reminded me of when people make fun of Melania Trump for modeling nude. Who cares? That’s not hurting anyone. She’s done other things that you can make fun of. There are elements of misogyny that come in but it’s important to call people out when they are doing things that are harmful which I think this was.’
Asked what she would say if she was sitting across a table from Baldwin and her husband, Briscoe said: ‘I wouldn’t sit at a table with Alec Baldwin,’ who attended an anger management course last year over a confrontation at a parking spot in New York.
Briscoe said: ‘I have some self preservation instinct.
‘If I could talk to Hilaria on her own, I would say she should say sorry to all the immigrants and English second language learners and moms of color who are actually mistaken for their children’s nannies. She should own what she did.’
Even after speaking to the New York Times Baldwin is ‘not owning what she did.’ Briscoe added.
Briscoe urged people to seek out the perspective of Hispanic women who are the ones who have really been affected by Baldwin’s actions.
She pointed to a satirical video by comedian Suni Reyes which she said summed up her feelings and was a great take on the controversy.
