Bulwark Takes - Inside Cheryl Hines’ Bizarre Kennedy Life

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Andrew Egger and Sonny Bunch talk about the new WSJ article on Cheryl Hines’ unusual public journey from a beloved comedic actress on Curb Your Enthusiasm to the spouse of RFK Jr., and how that shift has pulled her into political controversies. They discuss her tendency to sidestep criticism and avoid engaging directly with her husband’s more extreme views, questioning whether she’s deliberately playing naive or simply staying loyal. Along the way, they touch on the surreal mix of Hollywood image-making, Kennedy family baggage, and the uneasy intersection of celebrity culture with modern political campaigning.  How Cheryl Hines Went From Hollywood Star to Mrs. MAHA 

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Ecotechwindows.ca. Hey, everybody. This is Andrew Eger with the bulwark. The Wall Street Journal has a remarkable new profile out of Cheryl Hines, the actress, best known previously from as Larry David's TV wife on Curb Your Enthusiasm, A little more interesting recently as the wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., our cool new Health and Human Services Secretary who's been getting up to so much mischief over there. Really wild profile. We're here to break it all down for you is our culture editor.

Sonny Bunch, we're going to talk about it. Hopefully it'll be a fun time. Sunny, how you doing this morning? I'm great, Andrew. How are you? Oh, I'm just doing awesome. This is a weird piece. Where should we start?

What do you think? I wanted to kick things off with a fun game. that I like to call. I invented this game. Nobody's ever played this game before me. Three Truths and a Lie, which is, basically, I'm going to, I'm going to read four statements here that are derived from this piece. And you have to tell me which one is the lie. Hit me. Hit me. What do you got? All right. Three truths and a lie. Here we go. First statement. Cheryl Hines's first acting gig was at Universal Studios, Florida, where she played a fake Marion Crane on the Psycho Tour. up to 15 times a day by visitors with fake knives. That's statement one. Statement number two,

Larry David personally gave his blessing to the union of Cheryl Hines and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Statement three. Heinz objected to the family adding a baby owl to the menagerie of animals in the RFK Jr. home that once included an ostrich because she, quote, didn't like dead hamsters in the freezer, end quote. Fourth statement, fourth statement, the house that they live in contains painted portraits of both Hines and RFK Jr. And Hines hates her so much, she takes it off the wall whenever RFK Jr. leaves on business. That's it. That's the four statements. Now, I want to give folks at home some time to think about this, want them to let it rattle around in their brain about which of these statements might be true and might be false.

But, Andrew, you, again, have read the profile. And this is, I, like I said, I got a little bit tricky here. I'm curious to see if you can get which one is the lie. I think, I think, correct if I'm wrong. I think I might have lucked out on this one because I think I quoted the relevant portion this morning. But I think it's not dead hamsters in the, in the freezer, right? Is that the thing you slipped in there is like dead chicks? Yes, it's dead chicks in the freezer.

Also, it was an emu, not an ostrich. Oh, that's part I missed. But these are all, these are all functionally true things from the profile. Let's be honest here. These are essentially all true statements. The third one is actually, the third one is a lie. They had an eamu, not an ostrich. She didn't like having dead chicks in the freezer.

It wasn't hamsters. But for all intents and purposes, all of these statements are true, which just should give you a sense of how insane their life is. Yeah, that's a little taste of it. So let's let's back up a little bit. Cheryl Hines is a really interesting figure, at least to me, because I feel like for a month, kind of like the the HBO watching upwardly mobile liberal

keyboard class set. She's just Larry David's wife on Kirby's enthusiasm, right? And on that show, she is like a straight character, right? She's kind of the reasonable one. She's the one who is sort of the rock as he spirals out of control

all the time. And so I think we're all kind of walking around with this picture of Cheryl Heinz in our heads that is like, perhaps unduly sort of reasonable and uh and and normal and kind of just like you know she wouldn't stand for for the nonsense uh although although even even there she is married to larry david but but so that this is kind of what i was interested in this this profile is like she's given all this access she's given this this uh you know these interviews to the wall street

journal she's promoting uh her memoir that's going to be coming out here uh in in a few months and that's like what's what's happening here but i think a lot of people are interested in this profile because It's like, what's it like to be sort of like to just go from being sort of like a normal sort of Hollywood liberal by accident, by the way. I mean, she grew up kind of poor and like really, really was successful in her career. And like is a cool. Like her personal story is cool in that way. Like you grow up in a trailer and then you're married to a Kennedy, you know, America. And yet there's so much weird stuff as well around the margins.

And I think like I was interested going into this like, okay, how is she grappling with this? How is she grappling with, like, the next act of, of her sort of, like, Hollywood story of, you know, she's made it. She's successful on TV. She's famous. She's married to a Kennedy. And now all of a sudden, it's like, wait, I'm a, I'm a MAHA icon or my husband's a MAHA icon. And all my old friends are sort of turning on me. And I, what did you make of all of that?

I mean, like, when, when you go into this profile, like, how do you, how do you read, like, her responses there? It is, it is interesting because she is, you know, as you say, she plays Larry Day David's wife on TV. And that show kind of melds reality and fiction like Larry David is playing a fictionalized version of himself. She's playing kind of a fictionalized version of Larry David's wife. And as you said, she is the straight woman on that show. She is the, the person that a lot of the humor bounces off of mostly in the first few seasons. Yeah. And this is, this is, you know, tricky for, uh, for, uh, Cheryl Heinz, the Hollywood actor, uh, to, to, to navigate. Right. I mean, she's she is she's right in the middle of all of it right at the very beginning when he was kind of

starting to run for president and stuff she made a few sort of stabs at distancing herself uh they get into this in the piece a little bit she she uh the piece talks about how uh kennedy got in some hot water uh when he got in the race because he suggested that a holocaust victim and frank had more freedom than americans facing vaccine mandates that's interesting um i'm sorry i think that was a little bit before he got in the before he got in the race but as he was kind of gearing up as a as an anti, you know, COVID regime figure. She, she at that time pushed back. She, she put out a statement.

She called those remarks, reprehensible and insensitive. But he kept talking and she kind of stopped, right? She, she has, she has just kind of backed away from it. She went to like a UFC fight with, with him and the whole gang a few months ago, which was sort of interesting. And, and yeah, so now here she is promoting her book. The thing that struck me the most about all of this is, is her kind of like heroic determination to just stay out of it, stay above it, rise above it.

I mean, she gets hit by question after question, like, what'd you make of this? What'd you make of that? Would you make of this controversy? What'd you make of that denunciation of your husband by all of these remaining living relatives? And her constant sort of affect is just sort of bemusement, right? She's just kind of like, yeah, I just don't really understand why people are getting also worked up about this.

I'll just quote from the piece a little bit. Heinz doesn't get why some people are so mad at her. At first you're thinking, wow, why are they so angry or disappointed, she says, with a hint of curb-level disbelief in her voice. While she understands that some friends find it stressful to be around her, given their opposition to her husband's views, she's struck by the intense hostility of others. Some people can't even, I don't know, they can't even talk about it. It's rather strange, actually.

Then it goes on to talk about Lori David, the real-life Larry David's real-life ex-wife, as opposed to her, the fictional one, blasted Heinz for sitting behind Kennedy during his Senate confirmation hearing. Cheryl Hines in her best and most watched performance yet, David wrote on threads as the dutiful, adoring wife, setting women back decades. Heinz said she found the post odd, adding, I don't really have a relationship with her. So that was also even more surprising that she had so many feelings about me sitting behind my husband supporting him. I mean, this is kind of just the theme throughout her part, throughout the interview part of this piece, right? Is, wow, yeah, what do you make of that, huh?

It's kind of the mood there. I mean, what's going on behind the eyes there? I mean, can we, can we know, can we say? I've always had a certain amount of sympathy for the wives of politicians and political figures and pundits wives, et cetera. You, you, like, the idea that they have to agree with every single thing that they, that their, their spouse does or says or whatever is like, obviously not true. And, and I think that there is some allowance to be made there. But, like, they, you know, do you remember, Andrew, the, the Twitter ad, uh, that was promoting some nonsense? health device that our RFK Jr. was flacking and she, Cheryl Hines was with the RFK Jr.

in this ad and they were like having, I just saw that and I was like, you don't get to, you don't get to do the we're separate thing and also do this. Like, I'm sorry you can't. He shouldn't be doing this anyway because he's a member of the cabinet. Like first off, but like you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't, you can't separate like that. Um, and and, and, you know, have any, any credibility to do that. I don't know. Like, look, again, again, I do not, I do not think it is fair to hold her responsible for every, um, policy that her husband holds. But her husband holds so many terrible policies all at the same time that there is like a package. There's a package there. And it eventually it just gets overwhelming. It's like, uh, what do you, what do you see in him? What do you? Because I, again, like, we talk about the Kennedys. I, I, Andrew, I think you and I are probably, more sympathico on the nature of the Kennedy family than a lot of our listeners or even possibly colleagues. But the, but like the, the, the Kennedy family is, is kind of a cancer on

America. And the fact that it has finally, like, gotten to the point where arguably the person who will have the greatest influence on American policy of any Kennedy, maybe even more than Ted, who I think had more than JFK, like, is a crack pot and a crank, who's only there because he has a famous name. Like, nobody would listen to this moron with his ridiculous voice if he didn't have Kennedy Jr. At the end of his name, I'm sorry, it drives me bonkers. And this is why she is married to him. Let's be honest, she's married to him because he is a Kennedy and he's just, uh, the whole thing,

the whole thing. Yeah, a couple of things there. One, another thing we haven't even talked about in this piece is like just the whole weird Kennedy thing. I mean, the piece goes into some detail about like all the weird like hazing that's involved with marrying into the Kennedy family and all the different stuff they made this poor woman go through at that time. But on the subject of just kind of like her relationship to this whole thing, it's also true that that again, as I get into this piece, I mean, she is kind of somewhat embracing the role of sort of like, a Maha influencer, right? I mean, she, she has like a little, a little sort of like boutique brand that was selling what, aha, scented candles, something like that.

That is very much out of business now. I, like, I googled it after reading this. I was like, is this still a thing? No, that, that went away very quickly. I don't, I get the sense people weren't that interested in the Maha health supplement. Right, right. Well, at least not, yeah, I mean, aren't scented candles sort of like a thought to be very mildly carcinogenic?

because that's the kind of thing that these people in theory are pushing back. I don't know, I don't, don't, this is not health advice on the, on the bulwark podcast. Anyway, and the other thing on that very same, same note about the Maha stuff is she kind of gets into defending some of that stuff, even in the piece. I mean, here's one more quote. Is science ever settled? Everything's changing. Technology changes.

Everything changes. So how could something be settled and then not talked about again? Heinz asked, it's like any drug that goes on the market that at the beginning, everybody thinks is great. And then 10 years later, they realize it's causing some sort of issue. Well, there was probably settled science at the beginning. I think that really gets to what you were talking about where like this is not her bag, right? I mean, she would not be talking about all this stuff like unprompted.

And yet there is that kind of like something in the water of sort of the the crunchy California set that is appealed to by RFK that she's willing to kind of put her name to and set her shoulder to a bit. Absolutely. There's there is a total, again, total horseshoe factor here of like the crunchy California anti-vax liberal, you know, I. I always like to shorthanded by just saying Marin County, because that's where a lot of this nonsense comes from. But, like, that is, that's a real thing. And I, and I do think that this is part of her confusion, right? Her confusion is, well, how can you be so mad about this? We all were like, well, do we want to give our kids the vaccine? Oh, do we want to, do we, do we need to have our kids, you know, do all these things? Like, there is that, there is that undercurrent there. It sounds like she was absolutely part of it.

and he is just, you know, he's making the, the, he's just bringing that into the mainstream, um, which is bad. It's bad for America. It's bad for America. Uh, you shouldn't, you shouldn't do things that are bad for America is my general feeling on America and things you should do. At bottom, this is just a very weird and, and kind of sad story to me. Like, there's, there's not a lot of lessons to be, to be pulled out of this. She seems kind of amused by the whole thing. Obviously, she's not, you know, there's a really good quote from, from her sister, Rebecca Heinz in here. I'll just read that. It's like, why are you picking on Cheryl, says Rebecca Heinz? She hasn't done anything except

refused to leave her husband, which I guess it's true, right? It's true. It's not, again, this is, I always, I always have a very, I don't like going after political spouses. I like just don't, I don't think it's, I don't think it behooves anyone much of anything. But like, she's a public figure. She's going to these things. She is. She is. in the spotlight. She has her Maha health brands. At a certain point, she's doing Wall Street Journal, long Wall Street Journal profiles with photos of their incredibly compellingly awful decor house. Like the photo of her on this couch with like the terrible portrait,

which I don't blame her for taking off the walls on one side. If that's the portrait in question, then she is absolutely right. It's not a very good portrait. I don't blame her for taking that off the walls. But then there's the RFK Jr. one on the. other side where he's holding a hawk because you know he's a birder he's a hawk he's a hawk enthusiast and then there's like clips of uh like newspaper clippings of the family underneath it i just like it's a it's a monument it's an absolute monument to uh a degraded bloodline in america

that just has has really caused a lot of problems over the years and we need to if if if there's one good thing that comes out of this maybe it's people stop paying attention to the kennedy's forever. That would be great. You can make the case. Like, like, obviously, this is a lot of time and, and yelling to devote to Cheryl Heinz, Larry David's former TV wife on HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm and the current Spouse Barfrey Jr.

But at the same time, at the same time, I almost feel like there's, like, a little bit of a microcosm of, like, all of America in here, where it's like, she's, she is, has gotten to a place that she likes and that she feels like she's attained to. And now, like, her big priority is, like, we got to make sure nothing happens to upset the apple cart. Like, we got to, I'm married to a Kennedy. I did it. It's great. We've arrived. This is my American success story. And like,

when he starts sexting Olivia Nuzzi and, uh, and, you know, cheats on me other times and becomes the horrible health and human services secretary who's doing a lot of bad stuff, it's like her eyes are just kind of like fixed forward. Eyes on the prize. Don't get distracted. Don't talk about any of that stuff. I mean, isn't that kind of how the whole nation is sort of reacting to the Trump presidency? I would say, look, without casting stones at any friends or former friends, there is a lot of that, we're just going to, we're not going to pay attention to a lot of this other stuff. I want, we want, we want this thing, and this thing is happening.

That's good. We don't really need to pay attention to the other things that are going on. Maintaining one status is a very important thing to do mentally for the same. self the self health of lots of people right that is that is absolutely the undercurrent of a lot of America from 2016 to now just like I don't want I'm I'm not I don't want to give up my position I don't I don't want to get in trouble with anyone I don't want to lose my audience um and that is a problem that's a real it's a real problem no doubt about it all right we can we can probably leave it there. Good note to go out on. Sunny, thanks for coming on and talking about

it. Thanks to you guys all out there for watching. Hope you'll subscribe to the feed. Head over to the bulwark.com and see our other stuff. Let me just let Cheryl Hines talk us out here. I'll read the close of the piece. An earlier title for Hines memoir was running through bees. A play on a story Kennedy told her about encountering a swarm of bees on a hike with his daughter kick and the two getting through it as fast as possible with their lips sealed so their mouths wouldn't get stung. Quote, sometimes you just have to run through the bees, Heinz says, and it's better if you don't scream. Grab a coffee and discover nonstop action with BudMGM Casino. Check out

our hottest exclusive. Friends of one with multi-drop. Once even more options. Play our wide variety of table games. Or head over to the arcade for nostalgic casino thrills only available at BetMGM. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. 19 plus a wager, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions

or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866 531, 2,600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with eye gaming Ontario. Book club on Monday. Jim on Tuesday. Date night on Wednesday.

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