Alec Baldwin
Alec Baldwin is addressing why he has deactivated his Twitter account once again.
The 62-year-old actor shut down his account on the social media platform Wednesday, this time after receiving backlash for a tweet he wrote about an article on Gillian Anderson headlined, “Gillian Anderson’s American accent throws some people off.”
“Switching accents? That sounds … fascinating,” Alec wrote alongside his retweet of the article, seemingly as a tongue-in-cheek reference to wife Hilaria Baldwin‘s recent heritage controversy and resulting criticism.
Later on Wednesday, the former 30 Rock star opened up in an Instagram video, taken from inside his car while driving, about the incident and his subsequent decision to sign off of Twitter for the time being.
“Someone said this actress, who I won’t mention, had switched accents during the press for her show … and I just wrote, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ And of course you can’t do any irony on Twitter,” Alec said. “You can’t do irony in the United States anymore, because the United States is such an uptight, stressed-out place, and such an unpleasant place right now.”
Anderson, who grew up in both the U.S. and Britain, has played characters with British and American accents and has said she finds herself using both accents in her everyday life.
“Part of me wishes I could control it, but I can’t,” the actress, 52, told The Telegraph in 2009. “I just slip into one or the other. When I moved to the States I tried hard to cling on to my British accent because it made me different.'”
In December, Hilaria Baldwin, 37, began trending online when social media users claimed that she fabricated Spanish roots and a Spanish accent despite being born and raised in the United States. Hilaria has since apologized for not being “more clear” about her cultural background.
In his Instagram video, Alec went on to say he is a “huge, huge fan” of Anderson — who recently won a Golden Globe for her role as Margaret Thatcher in Netflix’s The Crown — and meant no offense, explaining, “That comment was meant to just illustrate the point that … the multicultural expressions of anyone, for that matter — whatever country, language, music, food, clothing, art — any of it, whatever of those expressions are important to you, that’s your business.”
“But I find that, of course, on Twitter — which is where all the a–holes in the United States and beyond go to get their advanced degrees in a–holiness — that Twitter is a place I had used as a news aggregator, and I suppose I will do my best to find other places that are similar in their news aggregation,” Alec continued.
The Saturday Night Live alum cited “the unpleasantness, the harshness” and “the bitter [environment]” of Twitter for his departure, saying that being on the platform “wasn’t worth” it: “I know everybody would say, ‘Just ignore all these haters,’ [but] the problem with Twitter is [that there’s] a lot of haters.”
While this isn’t the first or even second time Alec has quit Twitter, his most recent departure before Wednesday came back in January after Hilaria, found herself at the center of controversy regarding her heritage.
Alec has stuck by his wife’s side throughout. “While Hilaria has seemed a bit upset, Alec has been around to comfort her,” an insider told PEOPLE earlier in January. “He has been supportive and has tried to cheer her up.”
He also clapped back at several Instagram users earlier this week who criticized the couple’s sixth child, daughter Lucia, joining the family via surrogate five months after Hilaria gave birth to son Eduardo “Edu” Pao Lucas.
“You should shut the f— up and mind your own business,” he told one user who commented negatively on a photo of Hilaria with their kids, replying to another, “I believe that people should simply say congratulations, or just shut the f— up. That’s it.”
