Actress Mayim Bialik said she was made to feel unsafe when she questioned the efficacy of coronavirus lockdowns, especially with the closure of schools and churches.
The Big Bang Theory star revealed her frustrations about that era during an appearance on the Second Thought podcast.
“I’m a bleeding heart liberal. Name it — I’m a liberal,” Bialik told podcast host and Free Press founder Suzy Weiss.
“The notion that if I questioned what we were doing about school closures, church closures, Black Lives Matter marches. Like, I just wanted to talk about it and even in my own home, it did not always feel safe,” she added.
Bialik said she experienced similar discomfort when questioning former President Joe Biden’s bid for a second term.
“Like, when I said, ‘I think it’s time for Joe Biden to not be running for president,’ ‘You’ve turned on us. You’re a hidden Republican,’” Bialik said. “And to me, that is the most democratic thing to be able to say, we don’t all have to agree, but something’s not right here.”
She ultimately blamed the pandemic for bringing so much division.
“COVID messed everything up six ways to Sunday,” she said. “That’s when that circle of everything right and left became like, oh, it’s not poles, it’s just a big circle. Because the crazy people on the left sounded as crazy as the people on the right.”
In the past, Bialik also experienced intense blowback due to her support for Israel. In 2025, she signed a letter rejected the celebrity-backed boycott of Israel’s film industry.
“We know the power of film. We know the power of story. That is why we cannot stay silent when a story is turned into a weapon, when lies are dressed up as justice and when artists are misled into amplifying antisemitic propaganda,” the signed letter said.