A reporter whose career was derailed over an alleged digital affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has revealed that she was worried about his health following reports that he had a parasitic brain worm—until he told her it wasn’t true.
During his 2012 divorce negotiations, the Kennedy scion, 71, gave a deposition in which he said he was suffering cognitive issues—including brain fog—due to a dead parasite that had burrowed into his brain, which was reducing his earning power.
The New York Times dug up the statements during the 2024 presidential election, launching countless jokes and memes.
But Olivia Nuzzi, 32, the former New York magazine star who was fired for having a “personal relationship” with Kennedy after writing a splashy profile of him in 2023, wrote in a new book that she “winced” when he joked about the parasite.
Kennedy, however, assured her that she didn’t need to worry because he never had a brain worm after all, despite having said so during both interviews and sworn testimony.
“I did not like to think about it, just as later I would not like to think about the worm in his brain that other people found so funny,” Nuzzi wrote in an excerpt of her forthcoming book American Canto published in Vanity Fair. “I loved his brain. I hated the idea of an intruder therein.”
She wrote that Kennedy made her laugh but that she didn’t like it when he joked about the worm.
According to Nuzzi, who has now been hired as a West Coast editor for Vanity Fair, he then assured her, “Baby, don’t worry. It’s not a worm.”
“A doctor he trusted had reviewed the scans of his brain obtained by The New York Times, he said, and concluded that the shadowy figure was likely not a parasite at all,” Nuzzi wrote. “He sighed. It was too late to interfere with what had already vaulted from the sphere of meme to the sphere of screwy legend, but at least I did not have to worry about the worm that was not a worm in his brain.”
Kennedy originally ran for president as a third-party candidate but dropped his campaign and endorsed President Donald Trump in exchange for a future Cabinet position.
He now serves as secretary of health and human services despite his brain parasite story, which it’s worth noting Kennedy himself started.
The secretary, who has been married to actress Cheryl Hines since 2014, has downplayed his relationship with Nuzzi and said they never had an affair. In her book, however, she writes that he told her he loved her and said he wanted her to have his baby, according to The New York Times, which obtained an advance copy.
Nuzzi has maintained, however, that the relationship was never physical. Instead, it reportedly included long phone calls, FaceTime sex, and explicit photos.
The journalist and her then-fiancé, political reporter Ryan Lizza, split in the fallout from the relationship.
Throughout the book, Nuzzi refers to Kennedy only as “the Politician,” but given the publicity surrounding their relationship and the fact that brain parasites are a fairly niche political topic, the context is clear.
The Vanity Fair excerpt also discusses the brain worm immediately after a convoluted passage about how security protocols for modern politicians were “carved by the same bullets that cut boughs from his family tree and cut the track of the American experiment,” lest there be any doubt.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Kennedy’s press secretary for comment.
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