Following Hilaria Baldwin’s complaints that “mean girls” and “bullies” organized a “strategic” campaign to get her eliminated from Season 34 of “Dancing WIth the Stars,” a former winner of the TV dance competition has said “that’s bull.”
Podcaster and pop culture critic Bobby Finger took to TIkTok to address Baldwin’s bullying claim to explain her being cut from the show on Oct. 7, after four weeks of her and pro partner Gleb Savchenko consistently getting mid-range scores from judges. The Hollywood Reporter said her somewhat surprising elimination was likely the result of her and Savchenko getting fewer votes from viewers than other contestants.
To explain why people didn’t vote for her, the wife of Alec Baldwin told Us Weekly that she faced “mean girls” and people organizing a campaign “where they wouldn’t just vote for their favorite … they were voting for all the other couples except us,” E! News reported. On Instagram, she declared: “I did get bullied off the show. That’s for sure.” She also said on Instagram that the campaign against her was “very coordinated, very strategic bullying.”
In an Oct. 13 TikTok post, Finger said that he, too, faced a regular chorus of criticism from hardcore fans when he competed on Season 27, according to E! News. “As somebody who was treated like crap by the hardcore fans of the show, yeah, bullying happens. But you don’t get bullied off the show. You get kicked off the show because nobody voted for you.”
While Finger said he was “bullied like crazy,” he still got enough votes to take him to the end and to win the Mirrorball Trophy.
Finger said Baldwin “was a great dancer” and someone “who came in with a ton of dance experience.” Finger is referring to Baldwin participating in amateur Flamenco dance competitions when she was in her early 20s. But Finger emphasized to Baldwin: “But no no no, you didn’t get bullied off the show. I don’t know her, but you got eliminated because people didn’t like you.”
Baldwin isn’t wrong to say she has her critics, given her past controversies. Actually, her online critics are pretty fierce, due to their belief that the Boston-born influencer has never taken responsibility for spending a decade, trying to pass herself off as being from Spain.
Baldwin’s “cultural appropriation,” as some critics have called it, began around the time that the one-time yoga teacher married Alec Baldwin and began to emerge as a media personality. Apparently to stand out as a glamorous immigrant, the woman born Hillary Hayward-Thomas often used a quirky Spanish accent in interviews and boasted about her family’s Spanish background. But the Spanish “grift” ended in late 2020 when people online uncovered the fact that she actually grew up in Massachusetts and came from a family with strong roots in New England and the Midwest.
Amid her disgrace, Baldwin somewhat retreated from social media and from constantly posting images of her seven children, which critics found exploitative. But she soon found a new role to play in the media — as the strong, supportive spouse of Alec Baldwin after he was embroiled in the tragic fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of “Rust,” a Western he was making in New Mexico in 2021.
Even while Alec Baldwin prepared to go to trial on involuntary manslaughter charges, the couple signed up for a TLC reality show, “The Baldwins.” It followed the couple as they tried to navigate that tragedy, while also trying to manage the chaos of rearing seven young children. After a judge threw out the case against Baldwin last summer, citing prosecutorial misconduct, Hilaria Baldwin appeared eager to kick her influencer career back into high gear.
After “The Baldwins,” “Dancing With the Stars,” was supposed to be a big part of Baldwin’s career revival, though she could be seen as among the ABC show’s most controversial contestants.
In the end, she only lasted four weeks on the show, which is clearly disappointing to her. On Instagram, to commemorate Mental Health Day, she also said: “One of the most common things that people say to me when they meet me — when they actually meet me — is how surprised they are by negativity that I receive. Because in reality, I am none of the negative things that some people say and that breaks my heart.”
But in response to Baldwin’s contention that she was wrongfully eliminated from the show, a couple people wrote “People not liking you isn’t bullying” and “you are not a victim.”