David Cross says Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may have made the internet’s strangest gym routine even stranger, but he is not buying the theory that jeans-wearing workouts are some kind of signature style. On Obsessed: The Podcast, Cross said, “I think a guy who gets in the soaking tub in his jeans is—a guy who works out in his jeans is weird. That’s weird.”
The comments came after videos circulated of RFK Jr. working out and bathing in jeans alongside Kid Rock, prompting chatter that he shared a denim fixation with Tobias Fünke, the famously rigid character Cross played for five seasons on Arrested Development. Cross, 62, has spent years fielding questions about Tobias, the so-called never nude who is unable to be naked even in solitude. He said the comparison is only partly flattering because Tobias is “deeply disturbed and deluded, and not especially bright.”
RFK Jr., 72, has given his own account. He told News last summer that he began exercising in jeans after going hiking in the morning and heading straight to the gym. In August, he said he found it convenient and was used to it. Cross brushed that off, saying, “He’s already weird,” and adding, “He was weird way before he entered a public office.”
The timing matters because Cross said he has been reworking his new stand-up special, The End of the Beginning of the End, after Trump’s second election victory, leaving him wary of comments that would age out before the laughs did. He said, “I’ve never had to do this before. I was like, ‘Oh. Since he’s going to be president, whatever I say now is going to seem so irrelevant and dated even six months from now,’” and added that a photo of RFK Jr. “with the goofy s--t on, holding that little whatever it was—the wand—just kind of says everything.” He also joked, “I wish he could have dressed up in his princess outfit, but we’re just not at that stage yet as a society to accept that.”
Cross’s broader point is less about wardrobe than about how public images can freeze a person in place. Tobias Fünke has been part of his career since Arrested Development aired in 2018 for its fifth season, and the role has followed him long after the show’s original run. But Cross said there is no going back now that Jessica Walter died in 2021, calling the series finished after 23 years and multiple reboot seasons on Netflix. He also said the final season was marred by production problems, including repeated reshoots and scripts that kept changing. “To be fair, Season 5 was a disaster. There were all kinds of problems,” he said. “We were constantly doing reshoots. The scripts were changing in a way that is not good for any actor, let alone some of the older actors who, you know, had difficulty.”
“They’d give you a new script, and you go memorize that, and then there’d be even a newer script when you got there in the hair and makeup chair at six a.m.,” Cross said. “You can’t work that way.”
For Cross, the joke landed because it tapped into a character he has already exhausted and a politician he thinks needs no costume help to look odd. The old show is over, the reboot era is over, and the jeans video only gave him another reason to say the quiet part out loud.
