The Baldwins is a bad taste failure of a PR exercise

By Emily Brookes*

Hilaria Baldwin and Alec Baldwin in kitchen, they both smile and hold the same glass Photo: Supplied

Review: There is a whole sub-industry within Hollywood's PR machine dedicated entirely to rehabilitating the reputations of once-disgraced celebrities: Lindsay Lohan, Robert Downey Jr and Winona Ryder are among its many success stories.

It's been working overtime for SAG and Emmy Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin and his wife Hilaria these last five years.

First, in 2020, Hilaria was accused of cultural appropriation and misrepresentation when it was revealed the name on her birth certificate was Hillary Hayward-Thomas and that it was issued not in Mallorca, as her agency's website claimed, but Boston; she was, it turned out, not ethnically Spanish at all, but a white American who had learned Spanish as a second language and therefore should not, really, have forgotten the English word for "cucumber" as she once infamously did on a talk show.

Then, before that dust had settled, in 2021, Alec fired a prop gun on the set of the film Rust that turned out to be loaded with a live round. The film's photographer, Halyna Hutchins, was shot dead.

The Baldwins' reputations were rock-bottom, and the reputation rehab sub-division had a bright idea: Let's get them a reality show.

The Baldwins was designed as a vehicle to ease Alec's transition back into public goodwill by giving us a glimpse into the effect the deadly accident had on him, his wife and their family as he prepares for his 2024 involuntary manslaughter trial.

We open at the start of the summer as Alec and Hilaria plan to pack up their seven kids together (Alec's adult daughter with Kim Basigner, Ireland, is briefly glimpsed at the start of the pilot, then not mentioned again) and take them from their Manhattan home to their East Hamptons holiday house.

The Baldwins - just a normal, loving family on a trip to the Hamptons. Photo: Supplied

The show, which is co-developed and executive produced by the Baldwins, is very eager that we see the Baldwins as a normal, loving family going through a very hard time. So we see the kids jumping off the furniture, throwing toys around, yelling, crying … it's as chaotic as you'd imagine a home of seven children (and eight pets!) would be, even when there are two, briefly mentioned but never sighted, nannies working there.

Then-40-year-old Hilaria has all the energy and sass of the yoga instructor she once was, and the Hispanic woman she never was. She bakes a homemade cake for Raphael's birthday and lets all the kids decorate, even the baby! (The baby's name is Ilaria, but she is exclusively referred to as Baby.) She marches the boys - including Alec! - out, on foot, to get summer haircuts! She tells her kids off in English and Spanish! She bought four cats, even though Alec is allergic to cats! What a hoot.

Alec, meanwhile, shuffles through much of the first episode, looking far older than his 60 years. In shapeless pants and grey polo shirt, he mutters ineffectually at the seven kids he sometimes looks surprised to see around him.

"He is a very tender soul," Hilaria says of her husband. "He is very raw, especially now."

Hilaria Baldwin in sunglasses and gray romper sits by the pool's edge with baby Illaria and Maria Photo: Supplied

The tone twists and judders as The Baldwins tries to illustrate both the joviality of the protagonists' home life and the depth of Alec's despair over Hutchins' death.

"I'm happier when I'm asleep than when I'm awake," Alec tells us, immediately before a cut to a shot of his kids playing on a massive inflatable waterside out the back of their Hamptons mansion.

He says he's been diagnosed with PTSD and has days when he can't get out of bed, in the five bedroom apartment he finds too small. Meanwhile, the kids have so much stuff "it looks like a toystore in here" and they "have nervous breakdowns if they don't have the right backpack".

This is where The Baldwins, as a PR exercise, really comes apart. Of course, to be the perpetrator of an accidental shooting would be a truly traumatising experience, though as Hilaria rightly points out, Hutchins' family has suffered more: "A son lost his mum."

In episode 2, Alec will go off to his New Mexico trial. After three days it will be dismissed on procedural grounds.

Alec Baldwin hugs his attorney Alex Spiro at the conclusion of his trial for involuntary manslaughter in First Judicial District Court on July 12, 2024 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Photo: Ramsay de Give-Pool / Getty Images via AFP

The shooting, Hilaria says, "will always be part of our family story". But now that part is over and the Baldwins can go back to their Range Rover, and their house in East Hampton, and their nannies.

Still, some rehabilitation may have occurred. According to Wikipedia, Alec has two films coming up.

Halyna Hutchison, of course, will work on neither of them.

New episodes of The Baldwins drop on Neon every Friday.

*Emily Brookes is a freelance lifestyle and entertainment writer.