Ireland Baldwin reflects on dad Alec's 'thoughtless little pig' voicemail from 15 years ago
Ireland Baldwin isn't here for the hate.
The model turned screenwriter, 26, took a stab at the "That’s Not My Name" TikTok trend, where actors go through the character names fans call them instead of their real names. For her take, also set to the 2007 Ting Tings song, Ireland shared mean names she's been called over the years. The list included "thoughtless little pig," which her dad Alec Baldwin infamously called her in a leaked 2007 voicemail message amid his bitter divorce and co-parenting struggle with Kim Basinger.
"My name is Ireland... but the media likes to call me…" she wrote in the video. The words "fat," "attention seeking, voluptuous, promiscuous," "silver spoon fed brat w/ no real job" and, yes, "thoughtless little pig" then appeared onscreen.
Fifteen years ago, a voicemail message that the Rust actor left for his then-11-year-old old daughter was leaked and published on TMZ. In it, he screamed and yelled, calling the child a "rude, thoughtless little pig" for not answering his call at the designated time that was set. The call was all over the press amid that rocky era of vicious celebrity journalism — at a time when Britney Spears was spiraling, Anna Nicole Smith fatally overdosed and Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton's arrests were tabloid fodder.
Alec — whose tantrums are legendary — said he was "driven to the edge by parental alienation" after his bitter split from Basinger.
However, both he and Ireland have publicly discussed it — downplaying it and mocking it, including when she roasted him in 2019 — making it clear that it's long in the past.
Alec — who was remarried in 2012 to second wife Hilaria, with whom he shares six children — is even friendly with Basinger again, at least on social media.
Ireland has said in the past that the real "problem with that voicemail was that people made it out to be a way bigger deal than it was." She said Alec "said stuff like that before just because he's frustrated" and "for me it was like, 'OK, whatever.' I called him back. I was like, 'Sorry Dad, I didn't have my phone.' That was it."
It seems that today, she feels the same way. In her social media post Wednesday, she railed against the media, presumably social media included.
"I can’t even tell you how much time I've wasted worrying about headlines and comments," she wrote. "Can you believe that? Can you believe how much control we give others and how much power we give their narratives. Maybe you don’t experience this on the scale that I do, but the majority of us have been called names and have had assumptions made about us. I hardly read articles that come out about me in general but often times when I do, I’m always sexualized in someway or compared to my parents in another," wrote the model.
She said she could "give less of a s***" what she is called because "I know who I am for the first time in a long time."
Ireland recently completed a screenplay, it's unclear for what medium, and told followers she's "excited to show you what I've been working on. I know that my decision to work in the entertainment industry will of course bring on the constant comparison to the achievements of both my parents, and I continue to embrace the parts of myself that are indeed like them... but I am very excited to show you the individual that I am and the person I’ve grown to very proud of."
She ended by saying, "I don’t give a f*** what you think about how I look, what I wear, what I think and say, and damn does it feel good to get to this point."
Meanwhile, Alec is back to work for the first time since the fatal Rust shooting. He was holding a prop gun that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in October. The investigation into the shooting continues, and Alec is a defendant in two civil lawsuits filed by crew members.
