Alec Baldwin deactivated his Twitter account after receiving backlash for a joke he made about Gillian Anderson. The actor revealed the news Wednesday in a video posted to Instagram. His announcement came hours after firing off a tweet in which he poked fun at Anderson for speaking in an American accent during the Golden Globes. The jab follows the scandal surrounding his wife Hilaria's cultural heritage and “accent."
"Switching accents? That sounds … fascinating," Baldwin tweeted, according to Entertainment Tonight. He later explained the comment.
"I just wrote, 'Oh, that's interesting.' And of course, you can't do any irony on Twitter—you can't do any irony in the United States anymore because the United States is such [an] uptight, stressed-out place and such an unpleasant place right now," he said in his video.
Anderson, who was born in Chicago but now lives in London, is bidialectal, meaning she is able to switch between English and American accents depending on her location. In his video, Baldwin apologized for his joke, although he did not specifically name the "X-Files" star.
"The person I was referring to is someone I am a huge fan of ... and that comment was meant to just illustrate the point that multicultural expressions of anyone ... that's your business," he said.
In the video, Baldwin also detailed why he chose to quit Twitter, explaining that it was full of "a--holes."
"The problem with Twitter is, it's a lot of haters. It's one-third interesting posts ... one-third tedious, puerile nonsense, and then it's one-third abject hatred and malice and unpleasantness," he shared.
Baldwin’s wife Hilaria came under attack earlier this year for speaking in a Spanish accent and misrepresenting her heritage. She is not from Spain and grew up in America.
Earlier this week Baldwin caused a sensation when he snapped at a fan on social media. He had just announced the arrival of his and Hilaria's sixth child when an Instagram user accused the couple of "begging for clickbait," Page Six reported.
"You should shut the f*** up and mind your own business," Baldwin wrote in reply. His outrage came after hundreds of fans questioned how it was possible for the couple to welcome a new baby, daughter Lucia, just five months after Hilaria gave birth to their son, Eduardo.
It has since been reported that the birth was via a surrogate. In his video, Baldwin spoke about his expanding family and how he was balancing work and parent duties.
"The good thing about being an older dad is work is less important to me now, I don't really need to work too much right now. I've worked a lot ... I've tried to balance that a lot with my wife and kids," he said, adding that having children is "the most rewarding thing I've ever done."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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