Meet Tracie Egan Morrissey, Writer Who Accused Jameela Jamil Of Having Munchausen's & Hilaria Baldwin Of Faking Her Accent
It's a she-said, she-said.
Kathy Hutchins and Lev Radin / Shutterstock A strange celebrity feud between actress Jameela Jamil and writer Tracie Egan Morrissey made headlines back in February 2020.
The one-time Jezebel editor started posting screenshots of interviews Jamil has done where she addresses her health history.
The screenshots showed that Jamil hasn't always been consistent in the details, leading Morrissey to speculate that Jamil isn't telling the entire truth or at worst, embellishing her stories.
Jamil did not takee kindly to the implications and has written scathing social media responses, saying, "First I’m lying about my sexuality, now I’m now being accused of munchausens? By an unhinged idiot who didn’t even realize in all her “research” that my car accident injury stories are “different” because they were about TWO SEPARATE CAR ACCIDENTS 13 years apart? You can keep it."
Now Morrissey is making headlines again after she accused Hilaria Baldwin, wife of actor Alec Baldwin, of faking a Spanish accent.
Who is Tracey Egan Morrissey?
Read on for everything you need to know about the allegations made about Jamil by Morrissey, as well as her recent allegations about Hilaria Baldwin.
Morrissey is a prolific writer and editor who has been in leadership positions at Bust magazine, then Jezebel, and she created the platform Broadly for Vice Media.
She left the position at Broadly over employee claims of toxic culture to become the head of non-fiction content development within Vice.
In addition, she's been published in outlets like Entertainment Weekly and The New York Times.
Most of her work is in the pop culture space, so following the lives and careers of media personalities is her main professional focus.
She also has a podcast called Pot Psychology where she and Jezebel writer Rich Juzwiak get stoned and talk about various topics. The podcast is based on their video series and book of the same name.
What does Morrissey have to do with Jameela Jamil?
Morrissey started digging into old interviews by Jameela Jamil and noticed discrepancies in the stories she told about her life.
Apparently, this made Morrissey curious enough to start doing more research. In the meantime, Morrissey began posting her findings on her own Instagram page.
Most of what she shared was screenshots and videos of interviews Jamil has done, so everything is based on verifiable material. "All I did was look at publicity interviews [she did on various occasions] from my kitchen [and piece them on a timeline],” Morrissey said in an interview.
She didn't really start ramping up her research into Jamil's life until Jamil came out as queer on social media.
"The one thing that bothers me and sort of kicked all of this off, is [Jamil], starting back when she came out as queer last week, she kind of blamed it on the press and said that they had misreported that she was the host of this show when literally that’s what appeared in the press release,” Morrissey explained, referring to Jamil's sudden announcement about her sexuality in the wake of criticism about her involvement in the new HBO series Legendary, which is about ballroom culture, a type of performance favored by gay and trans people.
Jamil is not only appearing on the show as a lead judge, but she's also listed as an executive producer.
“As an EP [executive producer] of the show, you would think she would look at the press release before it was sent out. She went after the press for misreporting it, but it’s literally their job to report facts and what’s true, and I find that offensive. And she’s continued to blame the press [for bad coverage],” Morrissey noted.
What is Jameela Jamil's health history?
Jamil is very public about her health struggles. She has shared she was born with congenital hearing loss and other inner ear issues that required surgery to correct when she was a child.
She is very open about her connective tissue disorder Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which she was diagnosed with when she was nine years old.
She says was involved in a car accident at 17 that required extensive physical therapy so that she could walk again.
She claims she suffered from an eating disorder in her teens, which was compounded by her own experience modeling. Now, she is very outspoken about the prevalence of eating disorders and the need for body positivity.
She also says she was born with severe food allergies. The allergies are complicated by celiac disease as well as mercury poisoning from dental fillings that affected her digestive tract.
She has also said she had a cancer scare in recent years.
She has also shared her struggles with mental health and her experience having an abortion.
Does Morrissey have any evidence that Jamil isn't telling the truth?
Morrissey has spent serious time combing through old interviews and social media posts to suss out any contradictions in Jamil's retelling of her own history.
Morrissey points out that Jamil said she had a cancer scare in 2015 but in 2019 tweeted that she actually had cancer twice.
She also claimed to have been attacked by swarms of bees but in a later video, Mark Ronson — who was with her at the time — later claimed in a video it was "maybe one or two individual bees."
Morrissey also found multiple mentions of concussions and other injuries in Jamil's Twitter feed, but no other evidence that the injuries actually happened.
More confusing than anything Jamil has said about her own health history, which really can't be verified no matter what, is a series of different things she has said regarding her early career as a model.
As recently as 2019 she's said she was a model and that industry contributed to her eating disorder. At other times, she has said she was never a model at all, saying in a 2013 interview, "I was a model scout," she says. "I was never a model."
What's the truth in this she-said-she-said fiasco?
In the podcast Morrissey did about the whole incident, she read a series of Instagram DMs Jamil sent her.
Jamil initially offered to have a phone conversation, then withdrew the invitation, saying, "Having spoken to a bunch of your previous colleagues, I have been advised not to talk to you on the phone as you will apparently lie about it publicly."
She refused to say which colleagues she had spoken to.
The situation escalated into a feud, but behind a paywall.
Jamil was not amused at being called a liar by Morrissey and took her to task about it on both Twitter and Instagram.
After a while, she started messaging Morrissey privately. But anyone who has spent any time online knows that screenshots are forever and they can also be made public — which is what Morrissey did with the messages Jamil sent her ... sort of.
Morrissey posted screenshots on her Patreon page so that her paid subscribers could see the messages.
There's nothing especially salacious in the messages. Most of what Jamil said is a reiteration of her public defense of herself.
She also claims Morrissey mentioned Jamil's mother and brother in her Instagram story and Jamil felt that was inappropriate. Jamil really did make the offer to talk on the phone, which Morrissey was ready to do.
However, Morrissey considered recording it "so that no one could be accused of lying." The rest of the podcast was mostly Morrissey and Juzwiak talking about how over-the-top they found Jamil's defense in this situation. As they noted, "The Kardashians would never do this."
As of this writing, Morrissey hasn't added any new material to her Patreon page but Jamil has another defender coming out for her. Her long-time boyfriend, musician James Blake, wrote a lengthy Twitter note about the situation saying, "It’s pretty disgusting to watch the woman I love just be dog piled on every day for such ridiculous things."
He went to share symptoms he's seen Jamil exhibit and closed by saying "Oh and FYI, the woman spreading these lies about my girlfriend has started a Patreon so that you have to pay her to hear them. Literally profiting off exploiting and gaslighting a young woman of colour with a chronic illness. Cool."
For the record, Morrissey's Patreon page has existed since January.
Plenty of people came to Jamil's defense ... as well as Morrissey's defense.
It's important to note that Ehlers-Danlos is a serious condition that can come with other problems.
A Twitter supporter of Jamil's says, "Having Ehlers Danlos would easily explain why she has most of her other health issues (and genetically linked breast cancer is also a real thing a lot of women deal with). Unrelated issues people have with her asides, that Munchausen page is engaging is blatant ableism."
Jamil responded, "Ehlers Danlos Syndrome means always having people doubt your illness and injuries because you look okay."
Another fan remarked, "I’m blown away people feel entitled to an explanation from you regarding anything. I understand the interest in public figures, but it seems the human ego can’t allow a person to believe another’s experience if they’ve not lived it themselves."
On Morrissey's side, Twitter users have shared their support as well:
Piers Morgan also weighed in on the feud in support of Morrissey saying, "Have a bag of peanuts Munchausen & pipe down. Everyone can now see you for the virtue-signalling fraud you are."
Tracie Egan Morrissey's allegations about Hiliaria Baldwin made the rounds in December.
Morrissey took to her Instagram Highlights to accuse actress Hilaria Baldwin of faking her Spanish accent, and the internet had a field day with the accusations.
Morrissey posted a plethora of videos of "evidence" on her IG Highlights, including one where Baldwin couldn't remember the word "cucumber" while doing a cooking segment and speaking with an accent, and a few of her speaking with no Spanish accent.
In a podcast recorded in April, Baldwin also said she moved to the United States when she was 19 to go to NYU for college.
However, many of Baldwin's former classmates from her high school in Boston have come forward to refute those claims, saying that they went to school with the former dancer and she went by Hillary, and actually grew up in Boston.
"I went to high school with her," one Twitter user wrote. "She was perfectly nice and pretty serious about ballroom dancing. Her name was indeed Hillary Hayward Thomas and she did not have her current accent. I believe she and her brother Jeremy (also nice) grew up in Boston and were white people."
Another Twitter user echoed those statements, writing, "Hillary was kind and hard working. And, yes, a white girl from Boston."
Hilaria responded to the allegations in a lengthy video on Instagram, which she captioned:
"I've seen chatter online questioning my identity and culture. This is something I take very seriously,and for those who are asking — I'll reiterate my story, as I've done many times before.
I was born in Boston and grew up spending time with my family between Massachusetts and Spain. My parents and sibling live in Spain and I chose to live here, in the USA.
We celebrate both cultures in our home — Alec and I are raising our children bilingual, just as I was raised. This is very important to me. I understand that my story is a little different, but it is mine, and I'm very proud of it."
You can watch her full response in the video above.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. She is the creator of the blog FeminXer and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.