What a long, stranger-than-fiction trip it’s been for Cheryl Hines. Over the last year and a half, her transition from Hollywood liberal to MAGA wife has stunned Curb Your Enthusiasm fans, not to mention some of her friends and entertainment industry colleagues.
“There’s just mutual headshaking,” says one former colleague sadly. Whenever the subject of Hines comes up within their social circles, “It’s like you lock eyes and you shake heads and you move on.” Another industry insider who has worked with her says, “It’s a sense of betrayal, like, who are you? Were you always like this? I don’t know you anymore!”
Now that she’s on the press trail hawking Unscripted, her forthcoming memoir about her life and marriage to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Hines is suddenly ubiquitous—and her media bombardment is triggering a new wave of sadness and disgust from some in Hollywood who once admired her. “I think people gave her the benefit of the doubt,” says the former colleague.
“Unfortunately, we’re now sitting here and it has been 10 months of a war on science, a war on vaccines, and a war on general intelligence. And to have to listen to this craziness about Tylenol and circumcision and whatnot,” this person continued. “It’s true insanity.”
In the wake of measles outbreaks, the normalization of junk science, and the whole Tylenol thing, the question of whether Hines’s career can survive this moment might seem frivolous. But at least one Hollywood heavyweight who knows Hines has their mind made up: “Whatever her reasons for staying with that weird, imbecilic husband and whether or not she subscribes to his inane positions is of no real consequence,” this person says disdainfully. “It isn’t as though we’re talking about Zendaya, whom one would desperately want to get into their movie.” Hines’s most recent project is a short film called Prowl that she starred in with her daughter, Catherine Rose Young.
No one interviewed for this piece wanted their name attached to their criticisms of Hines, out of residual respect for her or fear of Trump reprisal, or both. And none of Hines’s Curb costars have publicly aired their feelings about her transformation either; Those whom I contacted declined to comment. Even Larry David—who’s never been quiet about his liberal leanings, and who Hines credits for introducing her to RFK Jr. at an environmental fundraiser many years ago—has kept surprisingly shtum on this particular subject, at least since making clear in 2023 that he did not support Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Maybe that will change when David premieres his forthcoming HBO sketch series about American history? It’s produced, in part, by a very different president: Barack Obama. Hines, for her part, told Billy Bush this week that they are not in close touch: “I haven’t talked to him in a while,” she said. “I love Larry, and I think Larry loves me. I think it’s just politics.”
