Larry David’s Ex-Wife Slams Cheryl Hines for ‘Setting Women Back Decades’

Laurie David, the ex-wife of Seinfeld creator Larry David, has some searing feedback for the woman who portrayed a version of her on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm.

“Cheryl Hines in her best and most watched performance yet as the ‘dutiful, adoring wife’ setting women back decades,” David posted on Threads, as Hines was seated for the second day in a row behind her husband Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his Senate confirmation hearing to lead the Health and Human Services Department.

David’s gripe with Hines may hit closer to home than others. The environmental activist who was married to Larry David for 14 years became accustomed to Hines being mistaken for her since she played a fictionalized version of her for more than two decades on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

“It was confusing to people because people would ask me what kind of research I did on Laurie before I started playing her,” Hines told Rolling Stone in 2011, “And I had to say I wasn’t playing her.”

“Even when we started shooting, the first time I met her was on set after I had already shot scenes. So I was never basing this character on her, because I didn’t need to know her,” Hines added.

The long-running show did cause some confusion though, including for comedian Marc Maron, who accidentally called Laurie David “Cheryl” during an interview for Air America radio before the pair divorced in 2007. Maron said the error ruined “any possible good vibe to that interview.”

Laurie David has long-held that Hines was “nicer” than she was—a point she drove home with her Thursday post going after the actress. She told the New York Times in 2004, “[Hines] is much more patient than I am and much nicer to [Larry] than I am.” She added that Hines was “his fantasy wife, in every way.”

Just this month, David, who produced the the Oscar–winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth with former Vice President Al Gore, fled the Palisades amid the L.A. fires, taking refuge on Martha’s Vineyard, according to CBS News. As she made her escape, she remarked, “It really feels like the apocalypse.”