Summary
- Chelsea Handler went public claiming Cheryl Hines and RFK Jr. sold her a $5.9M “toxic” Los Angeles home she couldn’t move into for nearly five years
- Hines fired back on Tomi Lahren’s podcast, questioning the timing of Handler’s complaints and saying the story “doesn’t hold water”
- Handler has been making the rounds on Jimmy Kimmel Live and The View, keeping the feud very much alive — and very entertaining
Cheryl Hines, best known for playing the long-suffering Cheryl David on Curb Your Enthusiasm, is done staying quiet. The actress went on OutKick’s Tomi Lahren Is Fearless (but is she?) podcast this week to officially clap back at Chelsea Handler‘s very public, very pointed claims that Hines and her husband, RFK Jr., sold her a $5.9 million Los Angeles home so thoroughly wrecked it took five years to move into.
Handler didn’t exactly bury the lede when she first unloaded on her Dear Chelsea podcast earlier this month. “I still have not lived in this house. That’s how f***ed up this house was,” she told guest Denis Leary. She went on to say that inspectors described the Brentwood property in Mandeville Canyon as “the most toxic environment” and told her she couldn’t move in for at least two years.
And then there was the note. Handler says Hines had “the audacity” to leave a note behind saying, “Let us know if there’s anything we can do for you, Chelsea.” Handler’s response? “I’m like, ‘Yeah, how about a f***ing foundation? That’s something you could do for me.'”
Hines, for her part, is not exactly rolling over. Appearing on Lahren’s podcast, she challenged Handler’s entire narrative — starting with the timing. “I think yes, you have to question the timing of it, right?” Hines said. “Because she bought this house five years ago and she’s just now complaining about it.”
From there, Hines leaned into the logic of her own defense. “I did write her a personal note when she moved in, just saying how much we love the house… And if you need anything, call me. And I left my number,” Hines said. “So I don’t know if we were trying to unload a toxic house on her. I wouldn’t have left my number.” Fair point — or at least an interesting one.
Hines also didn’t hold back on what she thinks is really driving Handler’s story. “I think she’s just trying to get attention, and it’s probably fun for her to make fun of Bobby,” Hines said. “She’s trying to get a laugh, I guess, and some likes.”
Meanwhile, Handler has been on a full press tour with this grievance in tow. On Jimmy Kimmel Live, while promoting her new High and Mighty comedy tour, she confirmed she had just moved into the home for the first time. And naturally, she made it a bit: “I just did move in for the first time yesterday, so I’m good. I mean, I have chlamydia and herpes, and what else does he have? Measles. Oh, measles. I have chlamydia, measles, and herpes.” Subtle it was not. But on-brand? Absolutely.
Handler also stopped by The View, where she revealed that the whole transaction was conducted anonymously. “So I bought it in a blind trust and he sold it in a blind trust,” she explained. She only found out whose house she’d purchased after the deal was done — and she had a lot of feelings about it. Handler told Jimmy Kimmel that RFK Jr. is “the one person in the world that I would flag whose house not to buy.”
For Hines, the whole thing sits somewhere between baffling and predictable. “She’s buying a $6 million house and talking about how she feels duped and that we tried to sell her a house that was, her word, ‘toxic.’ Um, which also doesn’t, it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t,” she said.
A source close to the situation told The Hollywood Reporter that Handler had every opportunity to inspect the home before the sale closed and that the responsibility for identifying issues ultimately fell on the inspector and the buyer.
None of this, of course, is going to stop Chelsea Handler from having opinions. It never does.
The feud is a strange little microcosm of where celebrity culture sits right now — where politics, real estate, podcast feuds, and late-night comedy bits are all doing an extremely uncomfortable slow dance together. Hines, for her part, acknowledged that life next to an increasingly political Kennedy has changed things considerably. “There are certain words that people will love to isolate and put in an article. And so, they spin it the way they want to spin it. So yes, I do find myself being careful,” she said.
Given that this particular story involves a toxic home, a passive-aggressive note, a missing foundation, and a woman who compared herself to an RFK Jr. petri dish on network television, careful might be the right call.
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