When people began to realize that Larry David’s longtime on-screen wife Cheryl Hines was conspicuously missing from his new HBO show, “Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness,” rumors began circulating that Michelle Obama was somehow behind the casting snub, according to the Daily Beast.
After all, the former first lady could not have agreed with the former “Curb Your Enthusiasm” co-star’s turn toward MAGA politics after her controversial husband, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., became Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary. With Democratic former President Barack Obama, Michelle Obama co-executive produced David’s seven-episode comedy-sketch show about famous moments in American history, the Daily Beast reported.
After viewers began to see that some of David’s other main “Curb” co-stars had cameos in his new show — notably Jeff Garlin, Susie Essman and JB Smoove — the rumors about a Michelle Obama-directed casting snub of Hines began to heat up. The Daily Mail even published a story, citing sources in the production who said that the former first lady had “commanded” that Kennedy’s wife be banned from the show because she’s “now all MAGA, all the time.”
But Jeff Schaffer, a “Curb” co-executive producer who co-created David’s new show and directed all seven episodes, offered a different, less conspiratorial explanation for why Hines was left out. On the Daily Beast’s Obsessed podcast, he was asked if he and David had reached out to Hines to appear in the new series.
“Nope,” he said, the Daily Beast reported.
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Schaffer didn’t say much else about the decision to shun Hines, but he spoke with regret about losing a once-friendly professional connection with her.
“I haven’t spoken to her in a very long time,” Schaffer told Obsessed. “I’d like to think she still has that brilliant sense of humor she used to have, but I don’t know.”
For more than two decades, Hines played David’s fictional wife, Cheryl, on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” starting with the series premiere in 2000 through the finale in April 2024. But her marriage to RFK Jr. began to create a strain on her relationship with her “Curb” collaborators, especially as RFK Jr. ramped up his anti-vaccine rhetoric and public health conspiracy theories, according to the Daily Beast and Variety.
RFK Jr. ran for president in 2024, first as a Democrat and then as an Independent before suspending his campaign and throwing his support behind Trump in the summer of 2024. Ironically, David had introduced Hines to the former environmental lawyer and Kennedy family member at a celebrity ski event in 2005, which eventually led to their marriage in 2014.
But David, a “loud and proud liberal,” made it clear that he did not that he did not support RFK Jr.’s policies during the 2024 presidential campaign, especially after Hines’s husband accepted a position in Trump’s administration, Variety reported.
In a December 2025 interview with NewsNation, Hines admitted that she had lost touch with David after they taped “Curb’s” series finale in early 2024, Variety reported.
“I actually think I would be fine talking to Larry,” Hines told NewsNation. “Somebody asked me, ‘What would happen if you walked into a restaurant and he was there?’ I would be happy to see him and I’d say hi and we’d talk for a second.”
Hines then seemed to downplay her friendship with David, Variety reported. She told NewsNation: “It’s not like Larry and I used to play pickleball and we don’t now. You know what I mean? I would really see him at work or things like that once in a while, have lunch, but I haven’t really been around in L.A. the same time he has, so I don’t know. I’m sure things would be fine with us. And at the same time, I’m sure he’s not happy about politics.”
When NewsNation asked Hines if she felt “shunned” by Hollywood because she had forsaken her liberal politics to support her husband, including some of his anti-vaccine rhetoric, she said she had privately received support from “a lot of people who have reached out to me” and who said, “I love what your husband’s doing and I’m behind you guys 100%.”
But it sounds as though Hines would not have wanted to participate in David’s new sketch show, which premiered June 26 and continues through Aug. 7. An upcoming episode about Jonas Salk, the inventor of the polio vaccine, takes aim at vaccine skeptics like her husband, the Daily Beast reported.
The sketch features an unhinged character named “Bobby” who has a ruddy face and gravelly voice, the Daily Beast reported. The character is clearly based on Kennedy, as he spouts wild anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, the Daily Beast said. In response, David’s character tells him to “drop dead,” adding: “God help us if some moron ever put you in charge, that would be a dark day for humanity.”
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