Dax Shepard said on the April 6 episode of his Armchair Expert podcast that he had no clue about the backlash to Kristen Bell’s October anniversary post until about a week and a half after it went up — when someone finally alerted him that the whole thing was happening.
Shepard said Bell knew about the criticism through her publicist but did not tell him. He said he was surprised when he learned people were reacting to the caption, which joked about killing a spouse after an episode of Dateline. The post, shared with an Instagram photo of the couple, drew criticism from users who said it made light of violence that many wives have actually faced.
Bell and Shepard have been together for years. They met at a friend’s birthday dinner in 2007, ran into each other again two weeks later at a hockey game and started dating. They got engaged in late 2009 while co-starring in When In Rome, then married in a courthouse ceremony in Beverly Hills in 2013 after announcing their plans on Twitter earlier that year. Bell gave birth to their first child, Lincoln, in March 2013.
Bell’s anniversary caption said, “Happy 12th wedding anniversary to the man who, after and [sic] 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.’” In February, she told People that “there’s nothing that he won’t do to take care of me,” and said one thing she loves about being married to him is that he is never insecure about her shining more and more. Shepard echoed that closeness before, too, saying in 2010, “A snuggle party can fix anything—it’s true.”
The gap between the post and Shepard’s public comments is what stands out. Bell did not address the controversy directly in the facts provided, but her later praise of Shepard shows the couple’s public image stayed affectionate even after a joke that many readers saw as crossing a line. Shepard answered the question plainly on April 6: he had no clue until long after the backlash had already taken hold.
