Cheryl Hines Frets for Family as Husband RFK Jr. Runs for President

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. bids to supplant Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee, a top concern for actress Cheryl Hines is making sure their family gets through the campaign.

Branded a conspiracy-theorist by critics for his views on everything from COVID vaccines to alleged plots by the powerful, the scion of the Kennedy dynasty has nonetheless been polling at 20 percent against Biden, at least enough to raise concerns among some Democrats that his nomination bid could help to get a Republican elected in 2024.

"Elections are really dramatic, mean-spirited and invasive," Curb Your Enthusiasm star Hines told Newsweek. "I just want to make sure that my family — me, Bobby, our seven children — come out intact. That we'll still be the same people when it's all said and done. That we'll still be grounded — but wiser."

Hines, 57, said she was reluctant at first to embrace the notion of her husband running for president. His father was assassinated in 1968 while running for president and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was murdered in 1963.

But now Hines is fully on board with the campaign.

A longtime poker enthusiast — she won a $50,000 tournament in 2006 — she jokes with friends about the possibility of playing cards in the China Room of the White House, where dishes used by presidents as far back as George Washington are kept.

Hines said Kennedy's stand on COVID vaccines — he isn't vaccinated — meant she was used to taking heat on the issue in famously liberal Hollywood. She recalled the messages in the midst of the pandemic, when she was shooting Curb Your Enthusiasm and the game-show I Can Hear Your Voice and actors were required to be vaccinated.

"It was a very emotional time," she told Newsweek. "I had people saying, 'What is Bobby doing? He's making it harder for everyone.' Everybody wanted to go back to normal and they thought the only way to do that was if everyone was vaccinated. I heard from people who felt like that. One-hundred percent."

But she said some in the industry had discreetly told her to thank her husband for standing against the narrative. "I'd never name the celebrities who told me they hated what my husband was doing, or the celebrities who liked it," Hines said.

Hines was recently involved in the decision to have the campaign ask supporters to rally for her husband at Fourth of July parades, and was touched to see photos of large groups of them doing so in Marathon, Florida, Aspen, Colorado, Peachtree City, Georgia and several more locations.

Online hate

"Online, there's always hate coming at me because of Bobby's stance on vaccines. But now, also, because he's running for president, I'm overwhelmed by the positive comments. That's a shift for me."

Hines first met Kennedy 16 years ago at an event promoting clean water and they remained acquaintances for years. After she divorced her first husband and Kennedy ended his second marriage to Mary Richardson Kennedy in a high-profile dissolution, they began dating in 2011, taking a break when Richardson Kennedy died by suicide a year later. Hines and Kennedy married in 2014 and have seven children, one from her previous marriage and six from Kennedy's previous two.

During her 22-minute phone interview with Newsweek from Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, where her family was vacationing, Hines was careful not to wade into political minutiae. "I'll let Bobby answer all of the policy questions," she said.

"I'm glad he's running. It took a minute to get to that space," she said.

Part of it is the flack he's taking from his own party for challenging an incumbent, as well as modern-day liberal orthodoxy — he opposes trans women competing with females in sports, for example – but also due to his family history.

"I do think about it. It's impossible not to. It's part of American history, but it's very personal to Bobby," she said. "It's stressful, him being out in the world running for president."

"People fear the unknown," she said of some of her colleagues in Hollywood. "The known is Biden is a Democrat and he has the presidency. People say it is too risky to run against a Democrat already in office. But Bobby understands issues with a nuance I don't see in other candidates."

Asked for an example, she again demurs. "I'm not going to list issues because it makes my blood pressure go up too much," she jokes.

After a brief pause, she notes that her husband recently visited the U.S.-Mexico border "to listen to people's stories."

Hines didn't offer her view on the topic, but her husband's is that the border ought to be sealed, with a wall in certain sections, thus another position where he's aligned more with Republicans than Democrats, which leads to additional criticism that he's a DINO, a Democrat in name only.

"I've been in the public eye long enough to know some people just won't like you. The nicest, most thoughtful poet will attract a thousand people who can't stand them and say so online," said Hines. "Most of the time I'll move through the day ignoring the chatter. But it's frustrating because I know who Bobby is and what he stands for."

The most surprising thing about her husband's run for president is that it's not just the disaffected middle-class that is sick of the partisanship and scandals emanating from Washington, but intellectuals, billionaires and CEOs who have rallied behind him, said Hines. The latest, she said, was influential Wall Street investor Bill Ackman, who told CNBC that Kennedy was raising "important issues about vaccines and other issues that were worth learning more about."

Kennedy told Newsweek that he would not have thrown his hat into the ring without his wife's support. "She's critical. She has a sense of the popular pulse. She has wisdom that I and the rest of the campaign rely on. She's kind of the ultimate arbiter on every discussion," he said.

Her influence began immediately with her selection of the Park Plaza Ballroom in Boston as the venue for her husband to announce his candidacy. She participates in weekly strategy calls and she "specifically outlawed appearances on Steve Bannon's show, which I would otherwise have done," Kennedy said. She also works on merchandise and logo designs.

Hines wrapped filming on the comedic, coming-of-age movie, Popular Theory, which debuts at a film festival this month. But Hollywood is now in the midst of a writers' strike that has shut down most production, thus she has time to focus on her husband's campaign and Hines+Young, a line of self-care and anti-stress products like creams and candles that shun plastic packaging. She recently debuted the brand with her daughter, Catherine Young.

"It's slightly ironic it's launching at a time that's so stressful. But that's life," said Hines.