Curb Your Enthusiasm star Jeff Garlin has revealed to Obsessed: The Podcast that show creator Larry David was “very hurt” after their co-star of 24 years, Cheryl Hines, became a MAGA supporter.
Hines is married to Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and she was the only major star from Curb who didn’t appear on David’s new HBO sketch series Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, which Barack and Michelle Obama produced. Garlin is quick to assert that the former president and first lady “had nothing to do with” Hines’ exclusion.
Watch the full interview with Jeff Garlin here:
“No, this would be Larry’s choice,” Garlin said. “And I know he is very hurt by Cheryl. Her husband, a big ball of ‘no, thank you.’ Always, even when she was dating him. Even I recognized it in him. I thought he was a sick... Not even ‘No, thank you.’ ‘No,’ period.”
Garlin, 64, is an actor and stand-up comedian. His new photography book, Best Seat in the House: Moments No One Asked Me to Capture...But I Did Anyway (released Sept. 15), features photographs from his Hollywood career and anecdotes from on and off set. He played Larry’s best friend, Jeff Greene, on Curb, which aired on HBO from 1999 through 2024. Hines played Larry’s wife, Cheryl David.
David actually introduced Hines to Kennedy in 2004, when they were both married to other people. Later, Kennedy asked David’s “permission” to date his on-screen wife.
But while David and Hines remained friendly for years, their relationship deteriorated after Kennedy joined the Trump administration. “I love Larry, and I think Larry loves me,” Hines said in the fall of 2025, blaming “politics” for their estrangement. “I think he’s mad … because Bobby’s in the administration,” she added in a separate interview, claiming they were never that close to begin with.
Garlin, though, feels differently. He’s still close with Hines and said she’s “been nothing but a loyal, great, loving friend.” He writes to her “at least once a month telling her how much I love her,” which “thrills” Hines, he said.
“I know that Larry was really hurt,” Garlin repeated. “I don’t blame him. People don’t know what a sweet, sensitive, good man Larry David is. He really is.”
In Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, David not-so-subtly mocked Kennedy’s politics, eviscerating his former friend’s anti-vaccine stance. Still, Garlin added that David has never discussed Hines’ exclusion with him.
“He never said, ‘Hey, I’m not having Cheryl because blah, blah, blah, blah,’ Garlin said. ”It was just really his call. That’s what I’ll say.”
Garlin said he doesn’t understand Hines’ and Kennedy’s relationship, because Hines was always “a very liberal-minded person” and “pro-everything in terms of gay marriage and all that s--t.” But Hines, a former registered Democrat, has declined to criticize Trump and even said of the administration, “I like everybody in there.”
Though he and Hines are friends, Garlin remains completely baffled by her embrace of the MAGA movement.
“I don’t know what Bobby Kennedy might have on Cheryl,” he said. “In terms of something she signed or whatever, because it makes no sense to me. Seeing his confirmation in the Senate, and then she’s right over his shoulder—completely surreal.”
“It is confusing, but I do love her madly,” he continued. “I love her. And I consider her a very special friend.”
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