Photo-Illustration: Illustration: Vulture, Images: Getty Images
Not all friendships can survive political variations. On The Best People podcast, Tig Notaro explains why she fell out together with her former podcast co-host, Cheryl Hines, calling her shift to turning into MAGA “very strange” as her husband, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., started his right-wing political profession. “My friendship with her predated Bobby,” Notaro started. “There were things he thought and felt that I didn’t agree with, but he didn’t have the platform he got in the pandemic. I think that I needed to stop doing the podcast, because it was so ridiculous, it was so stupid — our show — that it was hard to be doing that when he was gaining momentum and speaking.”
The backlash in opposition to RFK Jr.’s political profession began breaking by to Notaro’s stand-up exhibits, with folks heckling her about him. “People would interrupt my stand-up shows and yell, ‘Bobby is crazy!’” Notaro defined. “I was telling Cheryl that I know it’s a small percentage that pushes back online or yells out at shows, but I was like, ‘Man, this is not my world. I don’t do this. I don’t want to be a part of this.’ And she was like, ‘I understand,’ but she wanted to keep doing the podcast. I had to step away, but I loved her so much.” Eventually, Notaro left Tig and Cheryl: True Story in April 2023, and Hines tried to proceed the podcast with a brand new co-host, Rachael Harris, just a few months later.
While Notaro hoped to maintain her friendship with Hines separate from her relationship with RFK Jr., Notaro quickly realized their friendship was turning into one-sided. “What was most upsetting to me is we were in such opposing places, but I continued to reach out to her and send her love and support because I didn’t know what was going on behind closed doors. Then things shifted very severely. I realized one day that she doesn’t ever reach out to me anymore,” Notaro added. “She responds to me, but she doesn’t reach out to me. I had to kind of shake myself out of denial that, ‘Oh, she’s gone,’ and, ‘Okay, I need to let this go. I need to let it go.’ What was a bummer is that there’s some interviews claiming I dumped her and left her in the dust because of Bobby, but I was trying to be a friend to her even though I didn’t feel like I could continue with the podcast. It’s been very strange, and I think I’ve moved past the confusion and sadness.”
Hines has seemingly misplaced a number of friendships over her husband’s political profession. Larry David, who performed Hines’s onscreen husband on Curb Your Enthusiasm, no longer talks to her. The Daily Mail additionally claims that a lot of Hines’s Hollywood mates had been shocked by the heel flip. One supply said, “It’s so hard to make sense in my head because she was so liberal before.”
