Tig Notaro is opening up about her friendship fallout with Cheryl Hines.
On the Monday, Mar. 9 episode of The Best People with Nicolle Wallace podcast, the comedian said she ended her friendship with the Curb Your Enthusiasm actress over political differences. Hines is married to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services under the Trump administration.
From 2020 to 2023, Notaro and Hines co-hosted the Tig and Cheryl: True Story podcast, which Notaro said gave her some of the “deepest, hardest laughs.” However, Notaro decided to step away from the show amid Kennedy Jr.’s, presidential campaign, which she said conflicted with her views.
“My friendship with her predated Bobby,” she explained. “There were things that he thought and felt that I didn’t agree with, but he didn’t have the platform he got during the pandemic.”
Notaro also noted that she was heckled at her comedy shows due to her association with Kennedy Jr., claiming that people would interrupt her stand-up shows by yelling, “Bobby is crazy.”
“I was telling Cheryl, 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,’” Notaro said.
“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,“ she added. “I had to step away, but I loved her so much.”
After Notaro left the podcast in May 2023, Hines recorded it with a new cohost, Suits actress Rachael Harris, with Notaro’s blessing. However, Hines and Harris stopped recording the podcast in December of that year.
The comedian then shared that despite distancing herself publicly, she continued reaching out to Hines privately to “send her love and support, because I didn’t know what was going on behind closed doors, because things shifted very severely.”
“And she would respond very pleasantly,” Notaro said. “But then I realized one day, she doesn’t ever reach out to me anymore. She responds to me, but she doesn’t reach out to me.”
She added, “I had to shake myself out of denial that, ‘Oh, she’s gone,’ and, ‘OK, I need to let this go. I need to let it go.’”
Hines and Kennedy have been married since 2014, and their marriage also caused a falling out between Hines and her former Curb Your Enthusiasm co-star, Larry David. The pair have not spoken since the sitcom ended in 2024.
Notaro is currently nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature as a producer on Come See Me in the Good Light—a documentary chronicling the life, art, and terminal illness of her close friend, poet Andrea Gibson. The 98th Academy Awards are on Sunday, Mar. 15, 2026.
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