RFK Jr.’s refusal to take off his blue jeans when working out or hot tubbing was immediately recognizable to anyone who has spent time with the character Tobias on the cult classic TV comedy Arrested Development—including the man who played him.
“I think a guy who gets in the soaking tub in his jeans is—a guy who works out in his jeans is weird. That’s weird,” David Cross said on Obsessed: The Podcast.
Cross, 62, would know a thing or two about never taking off jeans.
For five seasons on Arrested Development, Cross played Tobias Fünke, a man who suffers from a “rare psychological condition” which renders him incapable of being naked—even in solitude. In short, he’s a “never nude.”
After RFK Jr., 72, posted videos of himself working out and bathing in jeans alongside Kid Rock, a growing number of people have speculated that the Secretary of Health and Human Services suffers from the same affliction.
The MAHA politician explained his baffling reason for the denim-clad workouts to Fox News last summer.
“Well, I just started doing that a long time ago because I would go hiking in the morning and then I’d go straight to the gym, and I found it was convenient, and now I’m used to it, so I just do it,” Kennedy said in August, which host Jesse Waters said made “perfect sense.”
Like RFK Jr., Tobias always wears clothes—frequently a pair of cutoff jean shorts—even under his swimsuit and while he showers.
“The thing you have to remember is, Tobias Fünke is deeply disturbed and deluded, and not especially bright. So in that way, sure, it’s relatable,” Cross quipped, who noted that RFK Jr.’s proclivity for denim is just one of his many bizarre traits.
“He’s already weird,” the Emmy winner added. “He was weird way before he entered a public office.”
Cross told Obsessed that he altered his new stand-up special, The End of the Beginning of the End (streaming now on YouTube), in light of Trump’s second election victory.
“I’ve never had to do this before. I was like, ‘Oh. Since he’s going to be president, whatever I say now is going to seem so irrelevant and dated even six months from now,’” the comedian explained. “So I realized I should tape it at the end of that tour. And I’m glad I did.”
Even with the delay, there are always absurdist political moments Cross wishes he could’ve included, like Sen. Lindsey Graham’s mid-shutdown trip to Disney World.
“A picture paints a thousand words, and that picture of him with the goofy s--t on, holding that little whatever it was—the wand—just kind of says everything," he said. “I wish he could have dressed up in his princess outfit, but we’re just not at that stage yet as a society to accept that.”
As for whether Cross will ever return to the character of Tobias, he confirmed that Arrested Development is finally over for good after 23 years and multiple reboot seasons on Netflix.
“To be fair, Season 5 was a disaster. There were all kinds of problems,” Cross admitted. “We were constantly doing reshoots. The scripts were changing in a way that is not good for any actor, let alone some of the older actors who, you know, had difficulty.”
“They’d give you a new script, and you go memorize that, and then there’d be even a newer script when you got there in the hair and makeup chair at six a.m.,” he continued. “You can’t work that way.”
Season 5 of Arrested Development aired in 2018, and especially after the 2021 death of Jessica Walter, who played Bluth family matriarch, Cross says there’s just no way to bring it back again. “You can’t do it without Lucille,” he added.
Since ending his run as the never-nude Tobias, Cross has appeared in numerous TV shows and films and released four stand-up specials. Cross’s newest special, The End of the Beginning of the End, is currently available to stream on YouTube.
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