Comedian Tig Notaro opened up about her “very strange” falling-out with longtime friend Cheryl Hines due to the Curb Your Enthusiasm star’s full-MAGA turnabout.
“I had to kind of shake myself out of denial that, ‘Oh, she’s gone,’ and, ‘OK, I need to let this go. I need to let it go,’” Notaro, 54, said of the two-time Emmy nominee on MS NOW’s The Best People with Nicolle Wallace podcast.
From 2020 to 2023, Notaro and Hines, 60, cohosted the Tig and Cheryl: True Story podcast, which Notaro said gave her some of the “deepest, hardest laughs.”
The comedian said she decided to step away from the podcast and their friendship because of Hines’ husband, Robert F Kennedy Jr.’s, presidential campaign, which she said conflicted with her views. She had begun being heckled at shows by fans asking about Kennedy.
“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,“ the Oscar-nominated comedian added. “I had to step away, but I loved her so much.”
The pair stopped releasing episodes of their shared podcast in May 2023, one month after Kennedy, now 72, announced his presidential campaign.
For a few months, Hines recorded the podcast with a new cohost, Suits actress Rachael Harris, who Notaro said had her blessing. Ultimately, Hines stopped recording the podcast altogether in December of that year.
Though Hines initially stayed silent on her husband’s MAGA politics, she became more outspoken after President Donald Trump appointed the controversial Kennedy scion as secretary of health and human services.
In October, Hines was grilled during a tense appearance on The View, during which she parroted many of her husband’s unsupported MAHA claims, despite claiming she was not a “political person.”
A month later, Hines got emotional while discussing the falling-out with Notaro on the Howie Mandel Does Stuff podcast.
“When it was feeling a lot for her, there wasn’t much I could do about it other than leave my husband,” Hines told Mandel, who added that she had not spoken to Notaro “lately.”
Notaro told Wallace she kept in contact with Hines even after she left the podcast. She would often reach out to the actress, who she said responded “very pleasantly,” but it eventually became clear that the friendship had become one-sided.
“I realized one day that she doesn’t ever reach out to me anymore. She responds to me, but she doesn’t reach out to me,” Notaro explained.
She recalled thinking, “I need to let this go.”
Nearly three years later, Notaro said she has moved on from the whole affair.
“It’s been very strange,” Notaro said, “and I think I’ve moved past the confusion and sadness.”
