Jackie Tohn says she has taken her bond with Kristen Bell's children well beyond friendship. Speaking with PEOPLE on Wednesday, April 8, at the PaleyFest LA Celebrates Netflix's Nobody Wants This panel, the 45-year-old actor said Bell's daughters, Lincoln, 13, and Delta, 11, are her “birth children.”
“I tell them all the time that they're actually my birth children,” Tohn said, adding, “It's so funny, you look just like these Dax and Kristen people, but I carried you both and you're my children.” The joke lands because Tohn is already woven into the family’s orbit: Bell and Dax Shepard sometimes include her in special moments, and she said, “You're coming to family dinner.” “On my way,” Tohn replied. “You need to sit at this table with us.” “Coming!”
Tohn also said she passes hand-me-downs from Lincoln to her real niece, Lily, who is about the same age. “I have a real niece who's the same age as Lincoln, and when Lincoln grows out of her stuff, I often send [it to] my niece Lily,” she said. “I'm always like, 'This stuff is from me and Kristen.'” It is the kind of detail that makes the friendship sound less like a celebrity anecdote and more like a family arrangement that has simply expanded.
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That closeness also helps explain why Joe Gilette's presence in Nobody Wants This drew attention. Tohn has been dating Gilette since at least 2021, and he joined the series as a guest star in its second season. Bell later addressed the casting of real-life partners in a September 2025 interview, saying, “It got so incestuous,” and, “I had a blast on set saying, ‘Jackie's boyfriend is playing Adam's wife's husband and Adam's wife is playing Jackie's boyfriend's wife.’” She added, “It was like breaking the sim.” For Tohn, though, the bigger story is simpler: she says she feels like a member of the Bell-Shepard family, and she sounds like she means it.
