Why Cheryl Hines Love Story on ‘Curb’ Made Ted Danson So Upset

Ted Danson is still reeling from Larry David’s decision to have him divorce his real-life wife Mary Steenburgen and start a relationship with David’s fictional wife, played by Cheryl Hines, on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

In an episode of his Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast—released on the same day Hines made waves by sitting behind her husband Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at his confirmation hearing to lead the Health and Human Services department—Danson opened up about how genuinely “hurt” he was by the fictional plot development about his alter ego.

Asked by guest and fellow Curb co-star Susie Essman if he was “upset” when David told him about his character’s arc, Danson replied, “So much so that I’m going to have to couch in this conversation we’re having, how upset I was.”

“It was a very vulnerable time,” Danson continued, explaining that he found out the news the week after Donald Trump won his first presidential election in 2016. “So I’m feeling very disoriented and vulnerable and I show up to work to discover that we have divorced, Mary and I, or we’re getting a divorce, which I understand why, story-wise they did it, I think. But it hurt.”

He recalled having to break the news to Steenburgen as if it was something real happening in their lives and not just on a TV comedy. “And we got people, when it aired, friends, or at least acquaintances that we’d had dinner with a month before would write these notes to us, like, ‘Is it true? I’m so sorry.’”

Danson and Hines’ character got together in Season 9 of the HBO show and remained a couple through what David has said will be the final season last year—before Hines became somewhat of a Hollywood pariah for joining the MAGA orbit along with her husband.

Off screen, Kennedy famously asked Hines’ on-screen husband David for “permission” to date his now-wife. David sang Hines’ praises to Kennedy but later told her that it would be a “terrible idea” for them to “get involved.”