Hilaria “Leia” Baldwin.
Photo: Disney via Getty Images
Hilaria Baldwin, the queen of controversy and mother of “Baby,” was sent home in an upset on Dancing With the Stars on October 7. The reality star and wife of Alec Baldwin danced the quickstep to a Star Wars “Cantina Band” song while dressed as Princess Leia on Disney Night. Her total score was 23, putting her in the middle third of scorers. It was lower than the top score of 25 (which went to Mormon Wives’s Whitney Leavitt), but well above comedian Andy Richter’s tragic 18. Still, Baldwin got sent home by America’s votes. In her exit interview, she said that, while on the show, she learned to “open my heart up. All of this happened so quickly,” she recalled. “I signed the contract between when I got off the plane and when I got my baggage … that night I said to my 12-year-old, ‘What if I get voted off right away?’ And she said, ‘Mommy, at least you tried.’”
Baldwin’s run on the show has been mired in some controversy due to her previous experience with ballroom dance. When she was cast, fans dredged up an old scoring chart of Baldwin competing in tango at the 2004 Blackpool Dance Festival, where she appears to have beaten DWTS pro Emma Slater. “The ballroom competition that people are telling me is — I’ve only went twice and I think I was 19 or 20, and I think she’s five years younger than me, which should have put her in juniors,” Baldwin told influencer Zachary Reality in a September 24 interview. “Emma, actually, we were trying to figure it out — neither one of us could understand it.” In the season premiere, Baldwin addressed her dance experience, noting that she was taken out by an injury. “This was her life until she got injured,” Alec Baldwin said in an interview on the show. “So she’s just going to give it everything she has. And I’m proud of her. Very proud of her.” Ultimately, her past ballroom experience didn’t affect Baldwin’s results, given that she was never scored the highest of the week by the judges and ultimately went home fourth. But Richter, with his 18s, is still in it to win it, baby.
