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Cheryl Hines Slams ‘The View’ Over On-Air Ambush

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Cheryl Hines
Photo Credit: "Cheryl Hines" by Rubenstein is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=openverse.

Actress Cheryl Hines has spoken out about her frustrating experience on ABC’s “The View.”

Hines explained how the talk show’s liberal hosts completely disregarded her new book to instead launch attacks on her husband, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star sat down with Billy Bush on Monday to discuss her recent appearance on the daytime talk show, revealing that her hopes of promoting her book, “Unscripted”, were quickly dashed when the panel chose to focus exclusively on her husband’s role in President Donald Trump’s administration.

When Bush asked whether “The View” hosts were what she had expected, Hines responded with a telling sarcastic hum. “Mhmm,” she said, closing her eyes in what appeared to be exasperation.

Bush attempted to defend the cohosts, suggesting they have “got to check up for their audience” and that “Joy Behar’s gotta do her thing,” to which Hines fired back, “I like that you say it with attitude!”

The actress made clear her disappointment with how the interview unfolded and that she had been “actually hoping that it was going to be more personal on “The View,” but it was what it was,” Hines said.

She went on to explain that tensions escalated during her exchange with cohost Sunny Hostin, who accused Kennedy of spreading “a lot of misinformation, a lot of chaos, a lot of confusion” to the American public.

At one point, Hines had to interrupt Hostin to ask, “May I finish?”

The political ambush became even more apparent when Bush asked Hines about her book.

“They just wanted to grill me about Bobby,” she revealed. “They want to dive into politics.”

When pressed about whether she could tell if someone had actually read her work, Hines paused briefly before delivering a damning assessment.

“Yes, I mean, I don’t think the ladies on The View asked me one question about my book. But, you know, that’s okay,” she said.

Bush concluded that segment by asking whether “all press is good press,” to which a clearly uncertain Hines responded, “I don’t know. Yeah, I guess?”

The politically charged atmosphere of The View interview was further highlighted by comments from moderator Whoopi Goldberg, who took direct aim at Kennedy’s qualifications.

“I do want to say, you know he’s not a doctor and he’s not a professional? And oftentimes, when he’s speaking, he’s speaking not with the best information,” Goldberg remarked.

“Some of the things he’s suggested take it out of the hands of my doctor and me, and my OBGYN and me, and I wonder, does it give you pause and are you able to say, ‘That might not actually be so, because I’ve got my experience and I’ve lived with this, and I’m still here.’ Are you able to have those conversations with him?”

Hines defended her husband by pointing out that “90 percent of secretaries of the HHS have not been doctors.”

When Hostin countered that previous secretaries have had science backgrounds, Hines shot back that “one of Obama’s secretaries of HHS was an economist.”

The ABC talk show appearance wasn’t the first time Hines has discussed the challenges she has faced due to her husband’s political career.

During a Friday interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, she opened up about how difficult Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign made her job on the final season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

Kennedy launched his presidential bid in April 2023, at the same time she was filming final season of the HBO comedy.

She revealed that Kennedy’s politics created a rift between her and her longtime coworkers, transforming what had been a joyful workplace into something more difficult.

“I don’t want to get emotional. I thought it was —” Hines said before cutting herself off.

“It was hard ’cause it made me sad. Because I had been working on this show for a long time, and it was always pure joy,” she continued.

“And I mean, even when the vaccines of it all were introduced, there started to be an element that made its way into conversations at work that, up until that moment, had — like I said — only been pure joy.”

When Carlson asked if Kennedy’s politics fractured her friendships, Hines acknowledged that they had.

She also noted that rather than talking about the final season of the show, her husband is a topic of constant discussion during interviews.

During her media rounds, Hines also addressed last year’s scandal involving her husband and journalist Olivia Nuzzi, which made headlines during his presidential run.

On an appearance on the “Kate Miller Podcast,” Hines discussed how she found about about the alleged sexting scandal.

“I think you always have to consider the source, right? So that’s where I start,” Hines commented. “And then it ends with a conversation with Bobby.”

Miller asked how she responded to Nuzzi, who was covering her husband’s campaign for New York magazine at the time, “trying to monetize herself over Bobby.”

“At the time, Bobby had been running for president and it was an exhausting year and a half of headlines and rumors and articles and chaos,” Hines told Miller. “And at that time, I thought, ‘Okay, this is more chaos and more rumors.’ And, um, it was a lot.”

After the magazine discovered Nuzzi and Kennedy had an alleged “personal” relationship, the publication put the writer on leave while Kennedy dropped out of the 2024 race and endorsed then Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Following his endorsement of the Republican ticket, President Trump announced in November his intention to nominate Kennedy to lead HHS, a nomination the Senate approved in February.

Meanwhile, Nuzzi secured a position at Vanity Fair in September as the publication’s West Coast editor, with her upcoming memoir generating media attention.

Looking back on the entire ordeal and what the campaign taught her, Hines told Miller that one of the lessons she learned was that “there are people that really want to be involved in the conversation.”

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