Why Alec Baldwin, Daughter Ireland’s Bond Was ‘Negatively Impacted’

Alec Baldwin took accountability for the outside factors that previously led to a tumultuous relationship between him and eldest daughter Ireland.

“My relationship with my daughter Ireland was so negatively impacted by my divorce with her mother — and having a very protracted custody battle,” Baldwin, 66, who shares 29-year-old Ireland with ex-wife Kim Basinger, recalled on the Sunday, March 2, episode of his TLC series The Baldwins.

Baldwin recalled a seven-year divorce from Basinger, 71, adding, “The financials were probably a year and a half and everything else was custody. It was just insanity and really tough.”

While discussing the difficult period of his life, Baldwin issued an apology to Ireland.

“One of my most regrettable things was how it affected Ireland,” he noted. “But she is grown and is 29 years old. I have a good relationship with her and she loves the kids [I share with wife Hilaria Baldwin]. She is sweet to them and is their older sister, but she isn’t in that pack.”

Alec used his experience with his first child as a lesson moving forward, saying, “This is why I am so focused on [my daughter] Carmen and I want to have a good relationship with her. Because I have a girl all over again.”

Before finding love with Hilaria, 41, Alec was married to Basinger from 1993 to 2002. Their divorce was finalized after a bitter custody dispute that later caused tension between Alec and Ireland. In 2007, Alec made headlines for his infamous voicemail where he called his daughter a “rude, thoughtless little pig.”

“It took a lot of time and a lot of therapy. We were both in really dark places in our lives,” Ireland told Entertainment Tonight in February 2020. “I think things being publicized the way that they were made things seem more heightened and escalated than it really was.”

Alec has previously spoken about how his personal life affected his relationship with Ireland.

“That was very painful in so far as someone who I thought wasn’t capable of a certain kind of behavior wound up being the Marquis de Sade,” he told The Guardian in November 2013. “That point of my life is a blur. I know exactly what projects I was doing from 1986 to 2000. And then from 2000 to 2006, during the Dien Bien Phu of my divorce litigation … I can barely tell you what I did for those six years. It was a period that was so painful, I was staring off a cliff for six years.”

The actor’s update on where he stands with Ireland now comes days after Basinger’s rare comments about their messy divorce. “Alec and I have a great relationship,” she told Variety in an interview published on Thursday, February 27. “I have great respect for where he is today, and his family. You know, we don’t spend Christmases and holidays or see each other very much. But we talk.”

Basinger noted that she and Alec have a “genuinely cordial” and “loving relationship” now. She is currently married to hairstylist Mitch Stone while Alec exchanged vows with Hilaria in 2012. The couple share seven children together: Carmen, 11, Rafael, 9, Leonardo, 8, Romeo, 6, Eduardo, 4, María, 4 and Ilaria, 2.

The Baldwins airs on TLC Sundays at 10 p.m. ET.