Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell celebrated their twelfth wedding anniversary in October. An occasion that otherwise would have happened without any public fanfare became a huge controversy after Kristen made an extremely tone-deaf post that said, “Happy 12th wedding anniversary to the man who, after [an] episode of Dateline, once said to me: ‘I would never kill you. A lot of men have killed their wives at a certain point. Even though I’m heavily incentivized to kill you, I never would.’” It was a mess made even worse by the fact that October is also Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Even Dateline NBC got into the comments, quipping, “Screenshotted.”
While talking with guest Nikki Glaser during this week’s episode of Armchair Expert, Nikki revealed an early draft of a joke that she’d cut from her Golden Globes monologue: ”Die, my love. If I had legs, I’d kick you… These are not just Dax Shepard captions for his anniversary post. These are movies nominated tonight.” In response, Dax revealed that he’s so tuned out to headlines about himself that he had no idea that there was any drama over Kristen’s post until a friend said something to him about it.
Nearly six months after his wife sparked outrage with an anniversary post containing a glib reference to murder, the [Dax Shepard] revealed he was in the dark on the backlash at the time.
“I was alerted by someone that this whole thing was happening,” Dax said on the April 6 episode of his Armchair Expert podcast. “I didn’t know, and Kristen knew through her publicist but didn’t tell me. So, I actually didn’t know, and this was brought to my attention.”
In fact, the 51-year-old admitted he first heard about the public pushback about “a week and a half” after the Frozen actress shared the anniversary post.
“I had no clue,” he continued. “Someone comforted me, and I was like, ‘What are you [talking about]?’ And then I had to go to Kristen, like, ‘What are they talking about?’ She’s like, ‘Oh, that post I had.’”
Kristen and Dax often get headlines for saying the wildest sh-t, so they probably do tune a lot of it out.
Earlier on in this episode, Dax shared a miscommunication that he’d had with his mother in which he thought she was talking about people thinking he abused Kristen, but she was actually referring to that time he talked about helping his 11-year-old daughter freeze her eggs. Here’s what he said:
Dax: I did kind of a blanket text to everyone in the family like, ‘Hey, I know everyone’s there for me. There’s no need to ever defend me. I’m great.’
And then so my mom called me and she goes, ‘I’m proud of what they’re saying.’ And I go, ‘That people think I abused Kristen.’
And she goes, ‘Oh, what’s that? No, that the thing about freezing your daughter’s eggs.’
I’m like, ‘Wait a minute, that’s a story? I’m in trouble for saying I would offer to pay for my daughter’s [eggs]?’
But it was just such a comedy of errors. Like, she didn’t know about that thing. Now we’re each informing each other of these other attacks.
Like I said, they are a gift to the headline gods. I can’t believe that Kristen didn’t even give him a head’s up about what was going on, especially because it involved him! That is wild. I would absolutely give my husband a head’s up about a controversy that he could be asked to comment on.
Photos credit: Jennifer Graylock-Graylock.com/Avalon, Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon, MediaPunch/INSTARimages
She wanted to shield him from the controversy she creates with her public post, although he really said that in private.
Wait. Did he actually say something about his daughter’s eggs?!?
She didn’t tell him because she was hoping it would blow over and he wouldn’t find out. Ever or until it was an absolute nothing. Because he’s unhinged and scary.
All I can see is, RFK Jr. Sounds like him, looks like him, thinks like him. He’s turned into a roid raging AH.
Always giving the ick with these two.
Kristen Bell makes me long for the days that we didn’t know everything about actors’ personal lives. I enjoyed her acting so much more in early Veronica Mars and Deadwood days when I didn’t know how often she showers.
I don’t understand. They want and because they do we’re giving them attention? Ok. I don’t follow either of them but I’m trying to understand what’s going. Never mind.
I can’t stand this narcissist with his roided, meat jerky leather face. Yeah, that was mean but it reflects who he is inside. Just a toxic dude all around. Even Cher doesn’t like him!