Disgraced ex-New York Magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi claims Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would often try to soothe her concern over an apparent dead worm found in his brain, telling her during their digital affair.
The 32-year-old political reporter detailed the bizarre exchange in her forthcoming memoir, American Canto, about her scandalous relationship with the Kennedy, according to an excerpt obtained by Vanity Fair.
Reports surfaced last year that Kennedy had previously said a worm had eaten part of his brain and then later died inside his head.
“I loved his brain. I hated the idea of an intruder therein. He made me laugh, but I winced when he joked about the worm. ‘Baby, don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s not a worm,” Nuzzi wrote.
The worm ordeal first emerged when the New York Times published a report during Kennedy’s failed presidential campaign that detailed some of the past health issues he had claimed he suffered decades earlier.
Kennedy testified in his 2012 divorce proceedings that one of his doctors believed a shadow on his brain scans was likely a dead worm in his head.
“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. 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,” she added.
Nuzzi’s American Canto offers new details on the emotionally-charged, never-physical romance with RFK Jr. that kicked off after she wrote an article about him in late 2023.
