Hilaria Baldwin Says She Sold a Photo of Her Child for $95,000
One thing about Hilaria Baldwin? She’s always going to have something interesting to say about parenting. On Wednesday, she appeared on The Viall Files podcast to chat about her accent, being married to a famous guy who is 26 years older than her, getting voted off Dancing With the Stars, and the seven children she shares with Alec Baldwin. But co-host and former Bachelor guy Nick Viall stumbled into new territory when he wondered aloud how he and his wife, Natalie Joy, should deal with paparazzi when it comes to their 1-year-old daughter, River. He noted that they’d stopped sharing photos of River’s face but were still struggling with the idea of incorporating their child into their public life. Viall then asked Hilaria how she and Alec navigated the press with their kids, prompting Hilaria to reveal that she spent the first few years of child-rearing selling photos of her offspring to the paparazzi.
“I don’t think there’s a right answer, but I found that the more I [tried to hide them], the more paparazzi there were,” Hilaria said. “So I sold the first photos of the first few kids, and I donated all the money to charity because it felt like a gross thing anyway.”
Hilaria went on to explain that the paparazzi culture was “very different” 12 years ago when she and Alec had their first child, Carmen Gabriela. Figuring that someone was going to profit off of photos of their baby either way, she said, she decided to game the system and put that money “in a good place.” She apparently sold a photo of Carmen for $95,000, which she then donated to an organization in Majorca (“Where my family lives,” she noted) that supports children who are victims of sexual abuse.
“That was what I did with my first few. It became less of a thing as I had more children and for everybody, since the business is changing,” she continued. “I just started sharing them on Instagram. It went from tons of people trying to get this photo to, I put it on there, I’m not going to get chased around as much.”
Hilaria added that she learned “from somebody who’s much more famous than me” that “the more that you put the photo up, the lower the bounty is and the less harassment you get.”
The 41-year-old didn’t detail who exactly she sold the photos of her children to, nor did she specify the exact amount of money she made off the images of her other children. But, just this once, I have to give it to her: That sounds like a pretty sound way to get the paparazzi off your back. Actually, it sounds like Hilaria has managed to build herself a strangely functional relationship with the tabloids — she said she tries to see all celebrity photographers as “human,” and claims to have befriended one former paparazzo who now lives in the Dominican Republic. She swears they still exchange Christmas gifts. What do you think she’s getting him this year?
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