Kristen Bell’s premiere week stumble

Today marks the release of the second season of Kristen Bell and Adam Brody’s Netflix hit Nobody Wants This. But with the fallout over Kristen’s controversial post celebrating her and Dax Shepard’s 12th anniversary not slowing down at all, things have been playing out much differently than she might have imagined in the lead-up to the release of the new season.

Days ago, she her post featured Dax in an embrace, with the following caption:

“Happy 12th wedding anniversary to the man who 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 incentivised to kill you, I never would.’ ❤️.”

The post, which went up this past Saturday, was there for at least an entire day before the reaction got really bad. But when media outlets started to pick up on the negative responses and publish full articles on it, she had to restrict the comments. Internet users took to the comment section to question whether it was supposed to be funny. They wondered out loud and amongst each other why anyone would say such a thing. Others noted that this was a particularly egregious thing to post during the month of October, which is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. But perhaps the comment that stood out the most came from none other than the Instagram account of NBC’S true crime show, Dateline, which had a one-word response that garnered over 75,000 likes. The word?

‘Screenshotted’.

Naturally, there were some people who defended her, saying it was obviously an inside joke between the two of them. Some of them revealed that they were survivors of domestic violence and that they were still able to find the humour in it. But it was bad enough that she had to disable those comments.

On Wednesday, she was set to appear on the Today Show alongside castmate Justine Lupe. But amidst the hoopla, she backed out, leaving Justine to do the appearance on her own. She did walk the red carpet in New York last night with her co-stars, though, at a screening of the show that featured a panel. 

But now, an interview that Kristen and Dax did while promoting their film Hit and Run in 2012 is making waves online. During the interview with SheKnows, there was a point where Kristen was recalling getting into a car that Dax had spent two years upgrading. When Kristen told him the car sounded like it was faulty and might ‘break’, Dax revealed to the interviewer that the remark offended him.

“And then I hit her several times,” he said to the interviewer. 

 “And then I got beat up, and guess what? I never opened my mouth again,” Kristen said. 

I’ve written about celebrities and past transgressions this week already, so I won’t go down the path of what’s forgivable and what’s not – but even 13 years ago, this exchange fits the criteria of being wildly odd and insensitive. 

To be clear, I get it. This couple is known for their offbeat and dry sense of humour. And for people who tune into Dax’s podcast, the fact that they have this dialogue, be it the interview exchange from 2012 or what she revealed he said to her in her recent post, may not come as a surprise.

But what is coming as a surprise is how the situation is being handled, which, quite frankly, is not really being handled at all. I mean, she’s just posting as if nothing happened. Wednesday night, her Instagram stories featured a reshare of Monica Padman watching season one of the show, followed by a link to a sold out $269 shirt she was photographed in, she shared photos of her alongside her ‘dream team’, and a snippet from an interview with her, Adam Brody and Derek Hough on Extra.

If I had to guess, I think the reason Kristen is carrying on like it’s business as usual is because for her, and for Dax, it is. But moments like this call on celebrities to think a bit more critically about what their roles and responsibilities are as a person in the spotlight. Particularly what your role is when you play a major part in promoting a show in the lead-up to it making its triumphant return to Netflix. Is that something worth jeopardizing in the name of making edgy content?

Currently, there’s a pretty cringey TikTok trend where couples are showing what men do instead of physically abusing their wives and girlfriends. The videos are often captioned something along the lines of ‘When she makes you mad but you don’t hit women’. The videos go on to show men opening every single kitchen cupboard and drawer, throwing pillows all over the living room and splashing water over the mirror. Or tightening all the jar lids of items in the fridge. This video shows a man tossing freshly washed dishes back in the sink as his partner is washing them. And this one shows a man toppling over piles of freshly cleaned and folded laundry. 

The comment section for a lot of these videos passed the vibe check, with people pointing out that all of these are in fact examples of abuse. Some people highlighted the passive aggressive nature of some of the actions, while others pointed out the blatant disrespect in deliberately inconveniencing your partner. It may not be physical, but it still constitutes abuse.

And there’s a certain air of that in both examples of Kristen and Dax’s interactions we’re seeing get all this attention right now. I think that’s why Kristen’s post was so triggering for some, even if it wasn’t triggering for others. Because in many volatile relationships, abuse looks the way it does in these videos in the early stages before becoming physical. Even more so, it sounds the way Kristen and Dax described it in that 2012 interview about him hitting her and her never opening her mouth again. Or more recently, being reminded that he could do something, and making it clear that lots of men do it, but he won’t.

So what should Kristen have done in the wake of this kind of flub? How should she be handling this misstep? What would Olivia Pope recommend? 

We’ve seen a few masterclasses in public apologies lately. One that I found to be very thoughtful and sincere came from a former Love is Blind star, Raven Ross who in September shared a ‘hot take’ (read: elitist and ableist) on TikTok about why Pilates is not as diverse or accessible as people want it to be. But people took issue with what she was implying, which was that it was for richer, able-bodied people, and if it were accessible to many others outside of that bracket, it wouldn’t be regarded the way it is. 

Inevitably, the backlash was swift. She stayed quiet for a while, until about a month after the initial video. She posted this reel to Instagram, first apologizing, and then announcing all the things she was doing to make it right, which included covering the cost of instructor certifications, offering free classes online to anyone who wanted to partake, and launching a free Pilates resource guide. Many people, myself included, agreed that this is what accountability looks like.

And yesterday, I wrote a piece about the importance of Gucci Mane apologizing for things he tweeted to celebrities during a mental health episode. The stuff he said to them stayed on his mind for three years and he made it a point to apologize when he got out of prison. The situations are obviously all very different – but one thing all three situations have in common is that people were offended. If anyone could have skirted around offering an apology and taking accountability, it would be Gucci. But he still made it a point to acknowledge how he affected people. 

For those who really don’t see an issue with what Kristen posted, or don’t feel like there needs to be an apology or accountability taken, that’s totally fair. But I do think we see a pattern between celebrities who are willing to offer up an apology upon the simple realization that they may have offended a group of people in order to avoid affecting anyone else and the ones who sit tight until the whole thing blows over. And even if part of that apology is just talking about the fact that she and her husband revel in an offbeat and dry sense of humour but that they’ve taken note of the real-life implications that can have on some, I think that would be much better received than sitting in silence.