On Saturday, the New York Post reported that Yale comparative literature student Spencer Wolff is suing Alec Baldwin’s wife, yoga teacher Hilaria Thomas, over an accident he suffered during one of her classes at the West Village’s Yoga Vida. The paper’s initial story didn’t include the details of 32-year-old Wolff’s injury, but their Sunday followup did. Apparently, Wolff was doing a handstand next to the studio’s sixth-story window when he lost his balance. His left foot went “straight through” the glass, which “sliced open” his leg in five places below the knee. (“There was a large amount of blood,” observed one witness.) Wolff’s lawyer, Paul Weitz, says that his client fears that he’s now stuck with a permanent disability. “He can’t flex the ankle and the foot points downward. He’s in a boot. He is worried whether he’ll be able to use his leg normally again — and right now it’s a waiting game.” But, as you can see from the tweet above, Thomas’s husband doesn’t buy it. (Or maybe he just knows a lot of graduate students?) The actor also has some issues with the Post’s handling of the story, and he expressed his displeasure with a signature Baldwin Twitter freakout.
The Post’s report is relatively fair and balanced: It includes the lawsuit’s claim that Wolff was forced to take a dangerous position by the window because the class was over-crowded, and quotes a student who said Thomas’s classes are often “insanely” packed. However, the writer also spoke to someone who said that Wolff ignored Thomas when she told him that he was doing the handstand incorrectly. While the story does say that a student yelled, “It’s your fault!” at Thomas after the accident, the Post isn’t exactly taking a position on whether or not that’s true. After all, the piece relies almost entirely on anonymous sources — the screaming person could very well have been Wolff himself. Additionally, the paper notes that Thomas accompanied Wolff to the emergency room, which makes her seem nice. Still, Baldwin felt the need to present his own — halfway overlapping — summary of the events:
And then there’s these:
Meanwhile, Thomas and Wolff have so far declined to comment publicly about the lawsuit, probably because they both realize that they’re pretty secondary to the whole thing.
