From Curb Your Enthusiasm to Courage — Cheryl Hines on Hollywood, RFK Jr. & Speaking Out - SF646
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Ladies and gentlemen, Russell Brand and Russell Russell Brand trying to bring real journalism to the American people.
Hello there, you awakening wonders.
Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
What a fantastic show it is.
It's an interview with Cheryl Hines, a person I've known for a little while as a result of being friends with Secretary Kennedy.
And I've been a fan of her for a long, long, long time, actually, because I love Kirby's enthusiasm.
One of the things about being a person that's operating in the entertainment industry is it's really weird to sort of reorganize your opinions and perspectives on people that you've liked for a long while.
For example, say Larry David.
I love Larry David.
I think he's really funny.
And I also actually thought it was funny when he wrote that My Dinner with Hitler about Bill Maher going to visit Trump.
I thought that was funny.
One of the things I'm trying to understand is how is it that we operate now in a space where you either hate everyone on this side of the aisle or love everyone on that side of the aisle and on the right there's endless fracturing candidates don't like this person, Jordan Peterson don't like that.
But I mean it's like that's why I feel like Christianity has got to be at the forefront.
Now think about the pivotal recent event, the murder of Charlie Kirk and how that seems to have further fractured the space.
Do you think, let me know in the comments and chat that over time Charlie Kirk was moving more and more into his faith in Christianity as the guiding ideal above his Republicanism.
When I took place, took part in a turning point event over in Oklahoma, what I thought was really interesting is one American Indian, I don't mean in a Pocahontas way, I mean India as in curries and that way, he said, I'm an American Indian, you know, look, you know what I mean, don't you?
Anyway, he said that his Hinduism for closed his full participation in Sangalak turning point.
And I said, well, look, the Christianity is really what I believe in.
I know like most of you are probably right-wing and most of you are probably Republican.
And I'm certainly not a Democrat person.
In fact, I'm English.
I'm not involved in any of this stuff.
What I believe in is the power of the Lord and the power of the Lord to change things.
And that's what we're advocating for in this show.
Whether or not that's where you are right now, what I'm interested in is how, as I've learned more and more about Christ, it aligns completely with, and supersedes, obviously, what I'd learned previously from a new age perspective, a Vedic perspective, a drug addict perspective.
In fact, just today, I was reading Ezekiel, the opening chapters of Ezekiel.
And he's describing what sounds to me like a UFO encounter, right, pretty vividly.
And I remember hearing about that when I was much more into doing acid and, you know, and extraterrestrials and counterculture from a new perspective.
A perspective now that seems somewhat jaded, although it's been further illustrated by the likes of David Icke, who was someone I was into when I was a kid, and Alex Jones and other folk.
You know, what I'm saying is, is that Christianity is a belief system that can encompass whatever it is you're trying to understand and appreciate, and that Christianity probably, I reckon, like everything, is going to go through some interesting revisions, although God is the Alpha and the Omega, the same in the beginning of time and before time as he is now and ever shall be, to quote from the Catholic Glory B prayer.
So what I'm trying to bring to the work that we're doing now is my own raw, honest, authentic, in-the-moment experience of getting to know Christ.
I'm writing about it.
I'm going to be performing in Austin.
In fact, there's a link here.
Come see me at the Vulcan gas station.
Gas bar, gas powerhouse, company.
Gas company in Austin, where I will be talking about Coming to the Lord in my show.
A funny thing happened on the way on my way to church.
I'll be doing that.
I've not written it yet, but like, my God, I've lived it.
And you can come and see me.
Let me know which of the snow songs you're most looking forward to seeing me sing at that show.
I'll see you there.
Click the link in the description.
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Now, this is the thing I really want to tell you.
Cheryl is interesting, Cheryl Hines, because she's like a, I think she's like a working-class woman, you know, grown, grow, grew up in Florida, got into acting and stuff, and then got with Bobby Kennedy.
And imagine she's just like with this Kennedy, I mean, kind of exciting.
He's a lawyer, an environmental lawyer, and all that.
Then he runs for independent president, well, president as an independent candidate.
And suddenly she's in a world of chaos and pain.
The best story she told me was this one.
It's in the book later in the book.
And if I'd done my research properly, I would have read the book, but you know, it's just, I don't know, look at me.
So, anyway, in the book, if you get it, her book, Cheryl, Cheryl Hines' book that she's written on this subject, which is called Unscripted, in her book, she talks about how when she first met Trump, she broke out in hives prior to the event.
She told me this story, not in the podcast, because I forgot to ask, but she told me in real life, and I loved it.
What she said was that before she met Trump, she's like, oh my God, it was at the RNC in Milwaukee, where Trump and Kennedy are meeting to talk about the alliance that subsequently happened.
Is he going to be vice president?
What's it going to happen?
How's this all going to work out?
Well, we know how it's all going to work out now.
But she's a person from Hollywood, knowing she's going to meet Trump for the first time.
She goes to some hotel room in Milwaukee.
I don't know what hotel.
I didn't see Trump other than from the stage or whatever the whole time I was in Milwaukee at the RNC.
Anyway, she meets him in some hotel room.
They sat around a coffee table.
And Bobby Kennedy, if you know him or have watched him, that dude can talk.
I know he has like vocal difficulty, but really he can talk.
Like he chats and chats and chats.
He's a racon tour.
Apparently, Trump sits down next to her and she's like feeling like, oh my god, this is Trump.
I'm meeting Trump and I've like come from this background, Larry David in Hollywood and all this stuff.
What's he going to be like?
And like he sat next to her and like Bobby Kennedy's talking maybe about, I don't know, who knows what he's talking about.
Let me know in the comments and chat.
He's talking about vaccines.
He's talking about health.
He's talking about doing pull-ups.
Who knows what he's talking about?
But just while Kennedy is like riffing and proselytizing and racing touring, Trump, apropos of nothing, just sort of nudges her and goes, I don't mind his voice.
I don't mind his voice.
When I hear those kind of things about Trump, I think, who is this man?
What level does he operate on?
A bit like when he was at the UN and he talked for ages and ages about grout and marble tiles and building techniques from the perspective of someone that had tried to win that contract when he was in the construction game in New York City to make the UN building in New York there opposite the Wardorf Astoria.
Many years ago, a very successful real estate developer in New York, known as Donald J. Trump, I bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations complex.
I remember it so well.
I said at the time that I would do it for $500 million, rebuilding everything.
It would be beautiful.
I used to talk about I'm going to give you Marlborough floors.
They're going to give you Terraza.
And I was like, yeah, man, there's war between Israel and Palestine.
There's war, Russia, Ukraine.
The world's complicated.
He's talked about it for so long.
It fascinates me.
The world fascinates me.
People fascinate me.
As far as I'm concerned, frankly, looking at the building and getting stuck in the escalator, they still haven't finished the job.
Obviously, Cheryl Hines has been in the public eye for a long time, mostly as a comedian and actor.
And she's got stories about Larry Davies, she's got stories about Robin Williams.
But I really liked her recent appearance on The View, where she was able to competently defend her husband's position.
In our conversation, in a minute, that you'll see, she talks about like she didn't say to any of the women on The View, let's talk about your husband.
And isn't it funny that a show like The View, which positions itself as kind of de facto progressive and feminist, when it comes to it, will just talk to a woman about their husband.
You know, there's like a screenplay writing law, which I bet Massey knows about.
That's like, if you write a film and you don't have at least a moment where two female characters talk about something other than a man they're involved with, it doesn't pass a particular test.
I think I've seen jokes about it on Rick and Morty, otherwise I wouldn't know about it.
Morty, do you know what the Bechdell test is?
For God's sake, Morty, the formula for measuring female agency in a story proposed by lesbian cartoonist Allison.
What the hell are they teaching you in that school?
Mother stuff!
Then you've killed us both.
Why is lesbian part of her job title?
Now you're progressive.
It's called the Bechdell test, where in order to qualify, say, as feminist or even just not sexist literature, you have to have two female characters talking at some point about saying other than a man.
And they would fail it.
And they'd be the kind of people that would say that they support it.
That's one of the things about progressivism that's irksome, it doesn't believe in its own tokens and emblems.
In fact, the word token is better than the word emblem because token is a gesture and emblem is a symbol.
So let's have a look at this moment where Cheryl spoke to the members of the View cast and see how it went down.
And let me know in the comments and chat before we get to the interview itself how you felt Cheryl handled it.
When you say that they are pro a vaccine, it seems as though Bobby and Trump are casting doubt on the efficacy of the vaccine, which makes Americans very nervous.
So that's the problem that we'll have.
Yeah, I understand that.
Yeah, I understand that.
And it's interesting because I don't know if you saw 60 Minutes just did a piece about the vaccine injury compensation program.
Yeah.
So people that have had vaccine injuries can be compensated if they can prove it.
And they have paid out $5.4 billion for vaccine injuries.
So my question is, can we do better?
Do we?
Is that all vaccines or just the COVID vaccine?
It's all vaccines.
It's all vaccines.
Look at Whoopi Goldberg going to bat for Big Farmer.
Yeah, but that's all vaccines.
Honey, that's no problem.
There's vaccines since time began.
There's people that were getting vaccines in the Civil War from George Washington that should be remunerated on that basis.
So it's fascinating that the default position is to defend the establishment.
As surely as their production model includes a QR code which demonstrates how they've evolved to be expert and functional at selling commodities.
Don't use that QR code, by the way, when you buy Cheryl's book, because otherwise the View will go, we are able to say that our guests sell this many books.
What we want is you to use this QR code that sells the book and then people will realize independent media is more effective at selling commodities even than their filthy propagandist stinking model and they will experience the decay and decline that is surely their legacy lord.
So buy it from us, not from her.
So what I'm saying is that what that is, the view, is a show that sells products.
In a way, our show is a show that sells products.
But hopefully you can tell and feel that we have got nothing to hide, that we are viscerally raw and open and candid and totally real.
And what I want to say mostly about that view and her being on it, Cheryl, I mean by her, is it's a unique situation because the view tends to churn people that are safe.
Once in a while, you'll see someone like Norm MacDonald on there and it'll be like, well, Norm MacDonald's breaking the set because of his brain.
Well, I can't remember what it was like when I went on those shows.
I do remember this.
I admire and like Whoopi Goldberg a great deal as a comic and as an actor.
I think she's cool, actually.
And one of the things, again, like I was saying about Cheryl David, and to Cheryl David, is it's weird if you've been an occupant of Hollywood to sort of then sort of find yourself, like, drifting further and further from that mentality and recognising how much of it is crap, but then sort of trying to stay aware of, well, what about this new cartel or coterie that you belong to?
And the only way actually that you can stand steadfast is principle.
What is the principle?
What is the principle that I'm standing by?
The principle is tell the truth.
Is that the principle?
Tell the truth?
The principle is serve God.
Is that the principle?
If you can't point to a principle, you're probably just doing what's expedient for you in that moment.
That's why one day you believe in free speech, the next day you don't believe in free speech anymore.
And that's why Cheryl being on there is interesting because Cheryl wouldn't normally be on there.
Her acting is so good that I've called her Cheryl David a number of times.
That's how easily duped I am.
She's of course called Cheryl Hines.
And as for the view, they don't have a principle.
They have a side.
And then they just bat for their side.
They just bat for their side without thinking, wait a minute, are we the goodies' hands?
Is the perfect clip.
Have you looked at our caps recently?
Our caps.
The badges on our caps.
Have you looked at them?
What? No?
A bit.
They've got skulls on them.
Have you noticed that our caps have actually got little pictures of skulls on them?
I don't.
Hans.
Are we the baddies?
Are we the baddies' hands?
Oh no, are we the baddies' hands?
Is the clip that everyone knows illustrates this perfectly.
Okay, well, let's watch the end of this, Cheryl, and then we'll go to the woman herself last time.
But so the question is, yes to vaccines.
Yes, they are important and they are an important part of our healthcare.
What I mean is war for independence, the revolutionary war, where George Washington at camp.
I can't remember.
Let me know in the comments in the chat.
The one where everyone's got hypothermia, they're all dying.
E-vaccinate people.
I know this.
Valley Forge?
Yes, Valley Forge.
At Valley Forge, George Washington, like, he bought over that mad baron dude, a mad German baron, and he was like, don't put the lavatories next to the kitchen.
Train these people to do this.
Move them into units.
He shaped them right up.
And I can't remember what the country was that they were fighting against, but that country lost their revolutionary war.
I think it was the French.
I can't remember the details.
Details are sketchy.
Anyway, George Washington came up or used a form of vaccination even then.
We'll be talking about vaccines, of course, in our show on Friday.
So make sure you tune in for that.
We'll be talking about Gavin DeBecker's book, which is up there.
And it's brilliant on the subject of vaccines and the observable and demonstrable corruption within the medical industry.
You'll love that book if you ain't seen it yet.
And also the interview of Gavin is fantastic.
Let's watch the end of this with Cheryl Hines.
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Can we listen to people when they say that instead of saying that's amazing because she's actually gone into the territory which we'll be experiencing a lot more of saying is there a link between vaccines and Asperger's and autism and attention deficit disorder and a whole deliberately loosely defined coterie of conditions and
the fact that they're difficult to diagnose is actually part of the issue and that is by design too.
Autism deliberately occupies a broad spectrum so it's really hard to track it and trace it to use a phrase from the COVID period.
That's all described beautifully in Gavin's book, Forbidden Facts also.
So please get that if you don't have it yet.
Okay, well let's get into our interview with Cheryl Hines who plays Cheryl David, who's written the book unscripted.
If you buy that book, it's going to make us look good and mean we'll get better guests.
The better the guests, the better the show will be.
You can participate in this ecology however you want to.
Get Rumble Premium if you don't have it yet and please enjoy this interview.
Cheryl, thanks so much for joining us today.
It's lovely to see you.
It's always good to see you, Russell.
We're here to talk mostly about your book Unscripted.
I've read a little bit of it.
You know what it's like reading books.
It's difficult, isn't it?
Sometimes I can write a whole book without reading it, let alone other people's entire books.
So, but it's I've had a bit of a heads up though, because like a couple of times I've been in, I've hung out with your husband and he told me the story actually, not as well as you've told it, but a pretty good job of, for example, how you got to be on curb and that you were known as Urine Girl as a result of your position and performance in a sketch, one of the sketches that led to your casting, in fact, or significant at least in your progression.
And it was really clear to me then, if it's not overindulgent and mawkish for me to say so, what high regard, obviously, your husband holds you in, but also that he's really paying attention to you and really cares about you and really enjoyed telling that story.
And like before I sort of knew you both, I thought like, and I hope this isn't a sexist thing to say, that Cheryl will be defined to some degree by her relationship with these two extraordinary and idiosyncratic curmudgeons, Larry David and Robert Kennedy, strong, peculiar, unusual, extraordinary and brilliant men.
And it's interesting to watch that play out on a cultural level.
Thanks for joining us today.
I've so much to talk to you about and listen to you.
Hopefully I'll shut up in a second, Cheryl.
I recognize this hasn't been a question yet.
But I just wanted to touch upon how your publicity tour began with your appearance on The View and how that has set the stage for you both promoting your brilliant book Unscripted, but also this new and unique position you're in as someone that's from somewhat mainstream culture and now occupies this liminal space that I find myself in.
And I know that you didn't ever intend to be here.
And it must be weird that because of love and marriage, you found yourself in this strange space.
How does View's appearance on The View typify that?
And was that the first time you've been, in a sense, confronted by your new position in the culture?
Yes.
You know, my husband, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is now the secretary of HHS.
And really, the view was, I had done a few interviews before that, but the view was a good indicator, you know, that a lot of people only associate me with my husband and his position.
So I spent that really that entire interview just defending my husband, but just, you know, laying out some facts about what they had been getting wrong.
So it was a good, it was good that I had the chance to do that, you know.
And I had, I, I, I haven't been on other interviews for a while, you know.
So it was a uh it was a jumpstart on this publicity tour.
Because it kind of cements the new position you're in in the same way, in, I suppose, that your husband's position in the culture reveals a lot to us.
Because in a sane, somewhat objective or at least good faith culture, the collusion and collaboration between Donald Trump and Robert Kennedy would have signified that the world, in particular, the American political and cultural world, was changing.
That it couldn't be as simple as Trump is evil and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and them are good, liberal, progressive people.
Otherwise, a candidate and figure that's much more progressive, open, willing to take on corporate interests, understands issues as diverse as big pharma, the environment, is now working with Trump.
It was too hard of a proposition to deal with.
But our culture these days, Cheryl, you know, as you're obviously aware, more aware than I am, is so partitioned that you never have an objective conversation about that.
So I think the reason, as well as the excellent way that you handled the interview, that it's become significant and got, you know, watched a bunch, is well, normally you don't see someone who's a natural in that environment because you're a successful actor representing that side of the conversation.
So it was pretty fascinating.
How did that interview help you to understand that you ain't in Kansas no more, that you're not like appearing on our HBO specials and beloved series with Larry David?
You're in this weird, this weird new terrain.
Yes, it did.
And I, I, I knew it probably would be that way, right?
Because it's just because of my experience and everything I've been seeing for the last, I don't know, year, two, two years, three years.
So it was, it was, yeah, it was, I don't want to say eye-opening.
My eyes were already open.
That's why I was ready for their questions.
But I thought it was interesting that, you know, in that interview in particular, they really only wanted to define me by my husband.
And I didn't ask them anything about their husbands.
Wouldn't that have been interesting if I like went down one by one, like, oh, your husband's in a lawsuit right now, isn't he?
But I didn't.
I didn't make it about their husbands, but that's what, you know, a lot of people want to talk to them.
Yeah.
Do you know what's what's also interesting about that is that the view would see themselves almost by definition as a kind of vessel for female power and female empowerment.
But when actually dealing with a woman, if it's not convenient to them, they will just talk about that person's husband endlessly, endlessly.
Because none of the values of the culture are that permanent.
Is that something like it seems like a long time ago that I was a person that was in Hollywood and married to Katy Perry and being in movies and having billboards of me myself up on Sunset Boulevard and working with comfortably in the environment where it's easy to believe you're fantastic.
And like, I, I, well, actually, I find it hard to believe I'm fantastic and even did then.
But like, was it like, what's it like for you, Cheryl, to depart from that world?
Has it been a wrench?
How do you feel about it?
Well, it's a good question.
I feel, I feel very fortunate that I've had the career I've had.
I've accomplished a lot of things I set out to accomplish as an actress.
So I have, you know, I've been in a lot of TV shows.
I've been in a lot of movies.
And at the end of the day, and I talk about it, this in my book, Unscripted, but at the end of the day, you know, you have to ask yourself what really matters, what really, really matters and what really brings you happiness.
And, you know, working does bring me happiness, but it doesn't compare at all to the happiness I get from my family, you know, and my relationships.
So all of those things are great.
Like you said, you know, it's great to drive down Sunset Boulevard and see a billboard, but it doesn't change your life.
But your family, you know, your love that you have for other people changes your life.
Well, I'll stop the interview there.
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Get over to Rumble and join us there.
I'm changing my perspective on work.
I feel like a lot of my life, I was working to redress feelings of inferiority.
And because it's normalized in the culture to appease, acquiesce that feeling through success.
Did you have a similar drive yourself?
Yes. I mean, I am a very driven person.
I'm a very passionate person.
So I'm, I'm, you know, oh, that really got you.
So I'm passionate about acting and writing and producing.
So, so yeah, it, it does, it is a big part of who I am.
It makes me, um, it makes me feel more complete as a person to accomplish, you know, even writing a book.
it feels like an accomplishment it feels like an uh you know an an accomplishment in the world in which i've set up in entertainment in um this this you know little subculture so yes it it's it's been important you know but uh and and
russell there was a time when i really feel like it probably defined me more as a person especially in the early years when i was um curb was starting out i wasn't married i didn't have kids and that was what that was the one thing i was doing and it it felt like oh this is who i am and then uh and then
as your life goes on and you and you start to have uh bigger things in your life more important things um it's still you know these these little accomplishments or big accomplish accomplishments are still important but
they are not um they don't really matter you know what i mean you must know what i mean because you do know you've been through this yourself every so often i get this kind of anguished pang cheryl of like the the pang of the amputation is how i've come to refer to it because i've obviously been cancelled out of that culture had allegations of sexual misconduct and
even rape and i'm standing trial next year for that and what's difficult is one of the ways that i'm um not surviving it because my life is sort of pretty incredible now actually but the one of the ways i've dealt with it is to kind of just cut it off and i feel like i'm inclined towards that
anyway like if something don't work i just cut it off amputate it and every so often though people maybe will ask me about like films that i was in or comedy that i did or something that i wrote and i remember thinking my god
i worked really hard i worked really hard i feel like as a stand-up comedy comedian doing it for nothing for ages and like for example when i think about the way that i got cast in sarah marshall and like it was like my first ever trip to la like the i interviewed adam sandler on a show that i did in the uk on mtv and he'd like me and him and his agent said come over and i met jad appetow actually i didn't meet jad a met
uh jason segal and uh the director of the film and they like you know after one meeting cast me and like and and you'll get this it was the audition was an an improvisation where i had to like uh kristen bell she went there like you know like they played um the girlfriend of the character i ended up playing like it was like i had to persuade her to do a bunch of activities on holiday so like as a person that does improvisation and loves that type of gear that was
A really enjoyable setup for me.
Like, and like, I think it's on YouTube somewhere.
People, like, you can hear them laughing in the background.
Yeah, I mean, I just sort of wonder, like, when someone was sort of stretching, I think, well, what are you trying to achieve?
You know, where are you trying to go?
You're not rest till you're nine foot tall that feeling of, oh my God, I'm good at something.
Oh, my God, it's actually going well.
You know, I notice you start your book with the phone call of like HBO are going to make a series out of curb, not just a one-off special.
And then it is validating and it feels exciting.
Well, I've had to kill all of that in myself.
I've had to kill it.
But actually, I've remained like a fan of that.
One of the, you know, I love comedy so much.
I love Curb Your Enthusiasm.
I'm a, you know, I'm devoted.
I've watched them all.
I watch it all the time.
I love Larry David.
I love Seinfeld.
I love it.
And it's a, you know, sometimes I feel like I don't want nothing to do with a culture anymore.
But one of the things that I, you know, where I won't make the same mistakes as the view is that I'm really interested in your career and I'm really interested in what it will be like to be on set because I know, at least I think I know, that, you know, that you work without a script.
I'll ask someone like Mike Lee, a British filmmaker, but you have an understanding of what the scenes are.
And in a minute, we'll get to how you feel about Curb Your Enthusiasm now and how you feel about Larry David now.
But for a minute, while we have you, can you tell me a little bit about the process of making them curbs, how it evolved, what it's like to do that?
Because Bobby told me the story of how you got it, what they gave you to do in the audition.
Would you tell us that story and see if you do it as well as your husband?
I'll do it much better.
Yeah, so you're right.
So Curb Your Enthusiasm is all improvised.
So there was no script.
Larry would write about a three to five page story outline for the show.
So he was, I mean, he's such a great writer and he would write very funny situations.
And then, and then we would just show up and shoot the scene.
And no two takes were ever the same, right?
Because they were always improvised.
So when I went into audition, they just said, you know, you just imagine you've been married to Larry for a while and you don't put up with his bullshit.
And that's all you need to know.
I said, okay.
And then I met Larry and he said, let's imagine we have kids and I don't eat chicken anymore.
And I said, okay.
And then we started talking in our improv and he, you know, said, what are we doing for dinner?
And I said, well, we're having potatoes and green beans and chicken cachatory.
And he said, I just told you I don't eat chicken.
I said, no, you don't have to eat the chicken.
And he said, why are we having chicken if I'm not eating chicken?
And I said, well, the rest of us still eat chicken.
So you'll just have to just eat more of the beans and the potatoes.
And, you know, and this went back and forth for a while.
And then, and then that was pretty much the end of the audition.
And then I left and I started walking down the hall to the elevator.
And the casting director came out and said, Can you go in and do one more scenario?
And I could, Russell.
I had that kind of time.
So I went back in there and he said, Look, I want to talk to you about something.
I don't think you put enough milk in the cereal bowl for the kids.
And I said, well, I cover the flakes.
And he said, well, he said, can you just fill it up to the top?
I said, what's the, there's no point in that.
Just cover the flakes.
And then they can drink milk if they want.
And he said, well, we can afford it.
Just let's fill it up.
And we went back and forth for a while.
And then that was it.
That was the whole, that was the whole audition.
They called me later and told me I got it.
What made you make the decision to, by the way, it seems perfectly reasonable to me to just cover the flakes.
That seems like a good, good metric for cereal milk ratios.
But what made you make the decision to serve the chicken instead of not serving chicken?
Did you logically and rationally understand that the scene would be better if there was conflict or was it instinctive?
Well, you know, I had been studying improv and sketch comedy at the Groundlings Theater here in LA.
I'm in LA right now.
So you learn, you know, because you never know what a scene is going to be about.
People give you suggestions, right?
So it's important information.
That's the only information you have.
So the scene has to be about the information you just received.
So I knew, I thought, well, it's important.
You know, the chicken is going to be important.
I have to talk about it.
Otherwise, if we had steak, there would be no scene, right?
So I knew, and I knew just from his, you know, telling me that prompt, I knew that I knew his point of view.
And I knew that my point of view needed to be different than his.
So if he told me before the scene starts that he doesn't eat chicken anymore, then I know I probably still eat chicken and that's going to be the problem.
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It's interesting in a because in an audition dynamic, like which anyone who's gonna succeed as an actor better get used to, you feel a little bit like weak in that environment.
Like you see, you're kind of desperate, and you feel like the people on the other side of that table have got power over you and that you're very vulnerable.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
And so it's very, it's interesting to what I'm interested to note is that they, in that setup, didn't say, I'm not eating chicken no more, but in the scene, serve chicken.
So, like, he must have known what the method of working was going to be as well.
That the method of working would require sympathico and understanding, and there wasn't room for a bunch of handholding and kid gloving.
Yeah, I think you're right.
And I think that they, you know, when you're doing improv, I think people either click, you know, and they know they, you know, I'm sure they did that in that way so they could see what decisions you were going to make quickly.
And yeah, you're right.
If he would have said, I'm still eating chicken, you're not eating chicken, you know, then as a performer, I'm not, I'm not really wouldn't be adding that much, you know, because I wouldn't be adding the way, you know, my sensibility to the scene.
I don't know if that makes sense.
Is that how like what the required dynamic is?
Because in a way, what you were doing in curb was being, it seemed as a viewer, was being a foil, but any good foil brings something other than just continually teeing up the comic.
And that's, and also you have the job of kind of having to be sympathetic and having to be like long-suffering and all them sort of tropes that we know from sitcom.
Yeah, it's in an entirely new.
I remember the first time I ever watched it, the first one I ever saw was that one where it's like, I think it's to do for like the birds singing and stuff.
And it's you and Larry in the kitchen and like him saying that you wouldn't miss it if he couldn't hear better.
And I remember like not even understanding why I was watching, like because just because of like the, you know, I don't know, I don't think it was earlier than the office.
So I guess, you know, with sin stylistically, and of course, the office is after Spinal Tap, and there's been things like it.
But I just thought, are they making this up?
You know, like it was so exciting to watch as a comic and as a comic actor to see that type of dynamic on screen because it seemed so real.
And I wasn't familiar with you before then.
And I suppose not even Larry, actually, because all it really we knew Larry David from was, you know, little turns in Seinfeld or if you knew his stand-up or whatever.
I thought it was like so cool and so brilliant and it really endured.
And I'll say this to you: I don't think it was ever as good when you left it.
And I'm glad they brought you back.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, you know, it's fun because, you know, the thing that you're talking about, Curb, that's definitely, you know, what was unique about it because it was improvised and you never knew what was going to happen.
I remember we were doing a scene with an actress named Julie Payne, who played my mom and Larry.
And Larry and she were talking and she said, she asked Larry if he had a mint.
You know, this isn't, there's no script, of course.
And he digs in his pocket and he did have a mint.
And he said, I actually do have one.
And she said, this is a loose mint.
And he said, well, you just asked for a mint.
It's, you know, it's pretty great that I even have one.
She said, nobody wants to eat a loose mint from your pocket.
You know, after those little moments like you're talking about, where you're watching it going, what am I watching?
But if you had a room full of writers, you know, and they're writing a sitcom, they're probably not going to write about a loose mint.
You know what I mean?
Because it doesn't move the scene forward.
It doesn't give out any information about the, you know, story A, story B.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then it's always debilitating, I think, when you're working on some creating something and it goes through that process of removing all of that stuff.
And it's the level of ingenuity required to ensure the survival, as they call it in the Seinfeld documentary, running with the egg about the process of Jerry and Larry and the team of writers there, ensuring that an idea makes it through all of those processes of getting into the screen.
And in the end, I've like I'm caught right now between sort of wanting to brutally cut off my own reminiscence and reflections on what it's like to be in films.
Because whenever people ask me about films or whatever, I'm like, oh, it's boring.
You're just waiting around all the time.
I don't want to do it no more.
Also, it's facile.
There's too many important things happening in the world for me to just spend my time dicking around pretending to be another rock star in another hat.
I want to be doing things that are connected to power and the world.
But then other times I saw, you know, listening to you and that mint story.
I, you know, it's play, innit?
I like play.
And like, like, losing that is hard, I think.
Well, I, you know, I mean, I think the difference between you and me, Russell, I think you are, uh, tell me if I'm right or wrong.
I could be wrong, but I think you, you're more of a all or nothing person, you know, like you, that's your survival.
That's uh, and but and by the way, your um your situation is so much more extreme.
You know, it is it it has been probably more dramatic for you, of course.
Um, but for me, I, I mean, I'm producing a film right now with my ex-husband and it's uh funny and fun.
So I'm able to, even though, uh, you know, I'm not, I'm not doing a sitcom right now.
I'm not, you know, um, driving on to Warner Brothers every day.
Um, but I'm doing something else that I love doing.
That's that's I see it's still capturing those moments and you know, you still have it.
And I hope that for you because I love you as a performer and so many people love you as a performer.
And you have that thing that 99.99% people do not have.
You're so fast, you're so funny, you're so quick, and you get comedy in a very unique way.
And you have you, you still have that and people want to see it, you know?
So that's pretty lovely of you to say.
Before I met you the first time, I felt like it's going to be interesting to talk to Cheryl because I now am in this new world that I didn't anticipate being in.
But in a sense, it's more native to me than the one I was in before, i.e., why did I ever find myself in Hollywood?
Why was I even doing that stuff?
What was it in me?
And in a way, it is kind of appetite, creativity, all them kind of raw ingredients, they could go in a whole bunch of different directions.
But our culture defaults to it's your job to monetize it.
I always felt that I had both a kind of.
a starving artist's love of what I do, inso much as I did do it for years without getting paid, doing stand-up comedy in the UK above pubs, not getting paid, open mic spots, traveling long distance to do 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there, Edinburgh Festival, all those things you have to do to make your bones.
But also I had that kind of ferocious, vapid, almost reality TV style, like, duna, like, look at me.
You know, I had both of those things.
And like, it could have gone anywhere.
And now like that the world is changing so fast and I'm changing so fast.
It's what's interesting is, as you observe, the culture is so split that you don't need to be going on to the lot at Sony or Warner Brothers or wherever.
There's an audience and therefore a market for you to make films and continue to make creative content outside of the old modality.
There's even sort of burgeoning media empires now outside of the mainstream, whether it's Daily Wire or other sort of what you'd suppose call right wing.
But in it weird though, for you to sort of, because like we were saying at the beginning, normally someone who has your views wouldn't be on the view.
They don't do that anymore.
Like they only have people on that ultimately, you know, they wouldn't have your husband on.
They wouldn't have me on.
They wouldn't have like, you know, all of those people sort of get sort of like sifted out.
So even though you're sort of seem to be saying that you're not in the way that you say that I am, and I reckon you're probably right, an extremist in a bunch of ways and you're happy to continue doing different versions of making films or making content or writing books or whatever, you know, you're still in it.
You're in it because everyone's in it because the culture demands it.
You know, like I think 20 years ago, Cheryl, they would have just gone, oh, you're married to Bobby Kennedy.
Cool.
All right.
Well, we're doing another series.
How about if we did a show about Cheryl?
Like they would, you know, that's not going to happen anymore.
You know, so we're all in it, aren't we?
We're all in it.
So because the culture's extreme.
And I just, I wonder how you're coping with that.
And I wonder how you're coping with, not coping with, if, you know, I just want to say, I just want to get your perspective on you've lived in it in one of the sort of, what I would say is sort of like one of the crowning artifacts of the culture, an HBO, prestigious, brilliant, an innovative and well-executed show.
And because of who you're married to and in love with, you're not allowed to do that no more.
And like, what's weird about it too is that Larry David is someone I fucking adore, like, you know, never met, but adore.
Like when he wrote that thing about Bill Maher and my dinner with Hitler, did you see that?
It's funny.
Yeah.
It's funny.
Yeah, it's so extreme.
Once again, very extreme.
And it's just like, you're right.
People can't separate anymore.
They can't.
I mean, and not everybody.
By the way, but a lot of people, I was actually just talking to Bill yesterday and we were talking about this because, you know, just sharing the same air with someone like President Trump, that alone is enough for someone to, you know, for Larry to write a scathing, you know, op-ed or whatever,
whatever category it was under.
Just like, how dare you sit with the president?
So it's, it's just a strange, um, but but you know what's interesting, Russell, what's uh what I'm what I'm seeing like on the inside is there is a bit of a counter culture going on with entertainment.
I've met several, several people now who huge producers, actors that have moved out of LA and they are starting their own, their own studios.
They are doing, I just talked to somebody who, you know, is starting his own studio because he he doesn't want politics to be involved.
And he doesn't want someone saying, you know, you have to mention this cultural thing in this episode or this series.
And, you know, he was talking to me and he said, he just wants, he just wants to make funny family films.
I was like, oh, that would be nice.
He goes, but, but not like having to teach people a lesson about whatever people have been wanting to teach people lessons about.
You know, but just like, just let's be, let's just have fun with the families can be funny.
Kids can be funny.
Parents can be funny.
It's like, yeah, I'm on, that would be fun.
So there is, there are people that are branching off and most likely not going to stay in LA.
The people that I have talked to are, yeah, they're not in LA anymore.
A lot of people are moving out and wanting to start something different.
The kind of analysis that would be applied to the putative or projects that a Hollywood dude or, you know, creative person was talking about.
Like, I just want to make things that are funny.
Right.
They would say, that's not possible.
That's never been possible.
You know, that's the hegemonics of that are that it was normalizing certain dynamics about a family and saying that if you're not included in a family, then you are a marginal figure in your jacket.
And I feel like that that got out of control.
That, you know, that you wouldn't just get notes from a studio that were like, oh, wouldn't it be good if this character did more of that?
Or don't you think that character is too similar to that one?
It's like being, you need a character that represents these ideals.
And also, but what was behind all that was not any kind of integrity.
It's all just marketing, really.
It's marketing and ECG scores.
There's nothing sort of credible about it.
And it's deleterious to creativity.
I saw Seinfeld once say, and forget this, don't you think, you know, I know this is sort of tangential, although you would have worked with Jerry in the season 10, I think it was, where it was the Seinfeld reunion shows.
Like, like Jerry Seinfeld was almost defined by the fact that he was a comedian talking about minutiae and normal life.
Now, like Jerry Seinfeld, because of his position on Israel as a New York Jew, is like, gets people turning up at his shows and sharing stuff.
So when did everything become so hostile?
And the idea that people might just be making comedy that's only about itself and not everything can be about everything.
And just because you're making a sitcom that's about family, that doesn't mean you're making a explicit comment about other lifestyles or races or religions or cultures.
Right.
The whole thing, like the fact that Jerry Seinfeld can be a divisive person, I think tells you the world's gone mental because he was a genius, but a commentator on normality, the normalcy.
That's what he was.
You're right, because people are so judgmental and they are, you know, so right in the case of Jerry Seinfeld, you know, they want to know his views as a person politically before they decide if they want to listen to his comedy.
So that's, yeah, it wasn't like this 20 years ago, was it?
No.
And it's changed.
I've never really talked about politics with other actors.
I couldn't tell you who I've worked with that was a Democrat or Republican.
I mean, I could tell you a few just because they would bring it up to me.
But otherwise, it was never part of the conversation.
But now it is.
It really is, right?
Yeah.
And I don't know how that happened.
And I don't know why that happened.
And I don't know who benefits from that happening.
What about when you had to start to enter into the world of your husband?
Did that require conversations with people?
Did people directly tell you what you're doing?
He's a kook.
He's a crackpot.
Did people tell you, did it affect you?
Did you feel doors being closed in your face?
And what was it like when you went into that world and started to encounter some of the people that define your new landscape?
You know, it depended on the day, right?
Because some days I felt like, some days I felt strong.
If Bobby was running for president and someone came up to me and said, you got to tell him to drop out.
This is ridiculous.
You know, some days I felt strong and I would be able to have that conversation and say, well, Biden is a weak candidate.
You know, this is where we are right now.
And this is why he's running.
And so some days I felt okay, you know, okay about it.
And other days I felt like, oh, wow, I didn't know I would need to be talking about this all day.
And, you know, I thought we were just here to do comedy.
But okay, you know, I can, I see, I hear that you're angry or that you're upset.
So, so let's talk about it.
But, you know, it wasn't the path that I had been bushwhacking as an actor, you know, you're like going through the jungle making your own path.
And then all of a sudden somebody else takes the, what is that thing called?
You're thinking about a machete.
A machete.
Yes.
Somebody else takes the machete and is like, I'm going, we're going to go this way.
And he's like, oh, okay.
Well, let's see where that leads us.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I want to mention now that when I've been hanging around you a lot and I've met, for example, Jackson.
Jackson is your nephew.
Is that right?
I love that guy.
Yes.
And he, no, he loves you.
Yeah. He's cool.
He loves you.
He's going to be so happy that you just said his name.
Yeah.
I'm very fond of him.
He sends me some unusual photographs just to clarify mostly things he's been shooting.
Like, you know, I'm not talking about erotica.
He, like he, I know that, you know, like that you've dedicated the book to your nephew, God rest his soul, Michael.
And I remember when Michael passed, and I remember how impactful that was on your family.
It's interesting.
We have a child who has had medical complications, and it seems somehow to have a divine component that being in the company of someone, it's particularly a child, I suppose, in both these instances, there's something about it that brings you closer to God or at least truth, I suppose, if you don't believe in God.
Can you talk to us a little bit about Michael, why you dedicated the book to him and what your relationship with him was like?
Yeah, you make a very good point because before Michael was born, you know, he was born with cerebral palsy, so he was very limited with his physicality.
He was always in a wheelchair.
He didn't have great verbal skills, a little bit, but not a lot.
And when he was born and started growing up, you realize, oh, this person is a complete person.
But you know that other people might have looked at him and thought, oh, he's in a wheelchair.
He can't speak very well.
It's probably hard for him to have relationships or hard for him to have feelings or understanding what's going on around him.
But that's not the case.
And like you're saying, it's almost like God is connecting to you, saying sometimes you have to look at somebody differently.
So with the case of Michael, he didn't speak the way most kids speak.
So you had to learn Michael's language.
And it was just as, you know, you knew what he was thinking and what he was communicating because you were with him his whole life.
But if somebody had met him one day and, you know, heard him try to speak, they probably would not have understood him.
So God gives you this being in your life that sometimes only you can understand that person or your family can understand that person.
And it's so, it's such a special bond because they, he felt that from us too.
He always just wanted to be with my family.
That made him the happiest.
He was the most joyful guy.
And he, that's all he wanted was to be with us, which of course made us feel great because, and all we wanted was to be with him.
But you know what I'm talking about to have someone who is not typical, not a typical person that you don't communicate in a typical way.
But you understand it.
Yeah.
Because I think that what happens is that we all adopt without understanding it a set of criteria about what a person is supposed to be, what a relationship is supposed to be, what our assumed objectives are.
And those things are generally dictated and determined by the culture, unless you have a very deliberately spiritual life, unless you've located these other principles by which I will be guided.
And I reckon, additionally, to my perhaps whatever feelings of being spurned or wounded by what happened with me, to me, for me, in the culture, being cancelled, etc.
In addition to that, is my sort of subsequent sense that that culture is geared towards goals that I don't agree with.
And the reason that you and your husband in particular are interesting to me, other than the fact that I love you both, is that it helps me to understand that that culture is inauthentic and not reliable.
In storytelling, as you will be aware, it's a process of revelation.
Good storytelling is when do you get the information?
Character is revealed through the events.
These events happen to the character.
Now I know what that character means.
When you know someone who's never going to be a participant in the culture because they can't work or make money or be sexy or do whatever it is you're supposed to do in that particular part of the culture, you're kind of confronted by what are they anyway?
What are they really?
And one time someone said to me, a Swami he happened to be, that a little girl had said that she was real excited before her younger sibling was born.
And when the sibling was born paraplegic and with cerebral palsy, she says she was disappointed and angry that she wasn't going to get the sibling that she'd imagined.
But as her relationship with the sibling grew, she said, My sister doesn't understand if you get angry.
She doesn't understand if you're frustrated.
But if you smile and if you're loving, she will understand and she will smile.
And in that is the revelation that we are trying to find love and express love in a variety of unique ways.
And probably I think that all of the people that I admire, I can tell in my interactions with them that they are in the service of love.
Not all of the time, because if that would be Christ, but you can see that generally they are so motivated by love that they will let it destroy them if it has to, if it has to destroy them.
And sometimes it takes people that just don't have the option of participating in, say, for example, if you have a disability, what's regarded, obviously, understandably as a disability, then you get it.
You get it concentrated in your interaction with them.
You sort of say, oh my God, the beauty, the God is in this person and God is in me and that God is love.
I can feel it in my interactions with them.
So it's strange, isn't it?
Because sometimes it's, as you said, Cheryl, it's regarded as not a complete life or not a complete person.
But sometimes actually what it is is a more radiant and more complete person according to different criteria.
And it's the criteria itself that probably needs scrutinizing rather than the person.
No, you're absolutely right.
You're absolutely right.
So sometimes somebody like Michael has much more than a typical person.
And it's, and if you don't have, you're right.
If you don't have that love in your heart, you won't see it in somebody else.
You won't be able to.
Yeah.
Yeah. All right.
Well, listen, look, thanks for coming on here and talking to us about Unscripted.
Thank you.
I'm writing a book for Tony Lyons and Skyhorse.
What's it been?
What's it been like working with him?
Has it been all right?
I love Tony.
He's been pretty, You know, I always hear writers and talk about their publishers and their publishers mad because they didn't turn in the pages.
I did not have that experience with Tony.
Tony's just been, yes, write what you want to write.
Get it to me when you want.
If you want to hit this publishing date, you've got to turn it in by this date.
And if you don't, then we'll publish it next year.
So that's been my experience.
I really love him.
And he's been a great creative partner.
Yeah.
Yeah, good.
All right.
Well, I'm looking forward to working with him on that.
How come you're working with your ex-husband?
I didn't even think about it.
I didn't even know you had an ex-husband.
And what are you doing making a film with him?
And how can you be so disloyal and cruel?
He loves Paul.
They're good friends.
You know, I've worked with Paul, you know, said for years and years.
And we just have a good, we have a good relationship.
We work well together.
He's got a good sense of humor and he's smart.
So it works.
What are you doing?
I can't tell you yet.
I can tell you when we're off.
We haven't announced it yet.
We haven't announced it.
Oh, I see.
Oh, fair enough.
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
All right.
Hey, Cheryl, thanks very much for coming on here.
And there's bits of the conversation actually where I really was forced to sort of think about my own relationship with, you know, creativity and, you know, my own sort of injuries around that kind of stuff.
So it's really informative and instructive.
I wish you all the best with this book.
Thank you very much for making time for us today.
Thank you for having me.
You know, I'm sending you so much love.
Thank you.
Thanks, Cheryl. God bless you.
Thank you.
Well, that's the end of the show.
I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Cheryl Hines.
I hope you think I've done a good job.
I myself am working on a book at the moment.
Please support Skyhorse, the publishers.
Yeah, Skyhorse, that have published Cheryl's book.
There's a link in the description so that you can buy Cheryl's book.
There it is.
Buy that book.
It's fantastic.
It really helps us when you do that.
And it helps her and it helps us to get good guests.
So please support Cheryl if you can.
I read some of the books since the interview.
I always do it the wrong way around.
I read it like since then.
It's good.
She's good conversationally.
She's funny.
You'll enjoy it.
Get the book.
And please do that for us.
If you ain't got Rumble Premium yet, get Rumble Premium now.
This Friday, we will be doing another show with deep dives into a variety of subjects.
And let me tell you what some of those subjects are going to be.
With having a look at flu and vaccines and how Senator Kennedy is impacting and affecting that world.
We're talking about the Obama legacy and the vite of him in the light of him building that great big monument to himself, some mad Kubla Khan monument and asking, what does he mean really?
Was Obama the moment when America really lost hope in politics?
You know, because what the left will say is Trump is a moment, but I remember how they were about Bush, man.
We're talking about Bill Gates on climate change.
We're talking about Bill Gates as one of the master architects of the global imperialist order.
And we're talking about a total loss of faith in corrupt pharmacology.
It's going to be a fantastic show.
Please join us there, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.