Kristen Bell is proud of how far husband Dax Shepard has come.
“He’s committed to growth in all aspects,” the Nobody Wants This star, 46, said during a recent appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show after being asked how it feels “to be with a man who’s emotionally aspirational and behaviorally got his stuff together and works on himself.”
Bell added that Shepard, 51, is a “lifelong learner” who has a “growth mindset.”
“I call him a vulneraboy,” she continued. “Because he is vulnerable. He knows a lot of stuff, but he’s also not afraid or ashamed to say, ‘I don’t know, I’ve never experienced this before.’ And that’s very sexy.”
Bell’s comments come after she raised eyebrows with a revelation about Shepard’s way of flirting with her during an appearance on his “Armchair Expert” podcast.
“If we go to a dinner or something, like, there’s a couple things Dax does where he doesn’t have to look up and wink at me, but I know that he’s just being the best boy,” she said on October 26. “We’ll be at dinner, and, like, he’ll say to the waiter or waitress, he’ll go, ‘Wow, you have incredible eyelashes, gorgeous eyes, great job.’”
When Shepard’s cohost, Monica Padman, pointed out that the behavior could be seen as “flirting” with other people, Bell insisted that it’s actually his method of flirting with her.
“Because he just made someone else feel good,” she explained. “‘Cause he’s gonna have zero interaction with — let’s say it is a girl. He’s gonna have zero interaction with this girl for the rest of his life. The chances of him ever having another conversation with her are so microscopic. But to me, to know that my partner actively smiles at people and gives them compliments [makes me feel good].”
A clip of Bell’s comments went viral on social media as critics accused Shepard of being unfaithful to his wife and manipulating her into agreeing with the behavior.
Shepard broke his silence on the controversy during the Monday, November 9, episode of his podcast, calling out the “weird narrative” that painted him as “controlling, abusive, now flirting with people in public, which I don’t do.”
“For me, growing up around certain men who behaved a certain way, and then literally dedicating my whole life to being the opposite of all that … I don’t ever yell at my children,” he said, referring to his and Bell’s daughters, Lincoln, 13, and Delta, 11. “I don’t swear at them. I don’t yell at my wife. You know, like, to have given it my all to be the opposite of what now some group of people is saying I am is hard, of course. So hard. I don’t love it.”
Shepard also said he found the narrative “deeply insulting” to Bell since it implies that she allows emotional abuse to happen in front of their daughters.
“We’re saying I flirt with Kristen by tipping people a lot, and I flirt with Kristen. Yeah, by complimenting people. If you think I’m complimenting hot young waitresses, you got a problem, right?” he continued. “I’m finding the dude that I don’t think has had a compliment in a while and telling him I love his shoes. It’s always somebody that I want to make their day. And so those compliments [are] flirting with Kristen. … I will offer publicly $10 million to any server you can find that I have given my number to, or hit on.”
Shepard concluded, “Generally, I can brush [these controversies] off, but when we’re now on year two of now, there’s a new [one] … then it just starts making me think like, ‘Oh, is this now my f***ing role going forward is just, like, every four months there’s another thing about me being a terrible man. And that makes me want to go away.”
