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In a memoir that tries to wrest control of her story, Ms. Baldwin says she was “canceled” via online sleuths who looked for inconsistencies in her Spanish accent.
May 7, 2025, 4:20 p.m. ET
It was the cooking demo heard round the world.
During the Covid-19 lockdown of December 2020, online sleuths stuck at home began digging up past public appearances of Hilaria Baldwin, a yoga instructor and the wife of Alec Baldwin. They were pointing out what they viewed as discrepancies in her Spanish accent and in stories she had told about childhood experiences in Spain.
A chief example was one in which Ms. Baldwin seemingly forgot the English word for cucumber during a cooking segment on the “Today” show, an event that The New York Times once called “the unfortunate cucumber moment.”
Five years later, in a new memoir, “Manual Not Included,” Ms. Baldwin talks about being “canceled” over claims that she was faking a Spanish accent. She doubles down in defending her speech, explaining that it is the result of a common tendency among bilingual speakers to “code-switch.”
She also invokes medical research around how common this behavior is and notes that her attention deficit hyperactivity disorder can affect her speech.
In the first chapter of the memoir, which Simon and Schuster published on May 6, Baldwin writes that “a coordinated mob” fueled by misogyny had set its sights on her in 2020, leading to global media circus over the perceived inconsistencies with her Spanish accent.
“It was miserable trying to explain it on the world stage,” she writes. “It just is what it is, and I didn’t know how to be any different.”
