Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell may be Hollywood’s golden couple these days, but there was a time when Shepard himself wasn’t even sure if he and his now-wife were a good fit. Hard to fathom, we know.
In a teaser clip for his Off Camera interview with Sam Jones, Shepard opens up about his ambivalence in the couple’s early years — and why he was worried Bell might be someone he shouldn’t date. Spoiler alert: It’s actually pretty sweet.
“I have this very weird mix of not thinking I’m good-looking, general low self-esteem, chip on my shoulder that I’m dumb because I was dyslexic, all these things, yet unbridled arrogance in relationships,” Shepard shared. “I’ve always been that way. I don’t know how to explain it… I’ve always felt very confident in relationships.”
Therefore, Shepard explains, it wasn’t that he didn’t think he could attract or even keep Bell. That was never the problem. His worries stemmed more from the kind of person she is.
“I was going, ‘Do I want to be with a Christian who has eight people living in her house for free? Who has to get out of a car when there’s a dog that doesn’t have a leash and ruin her whole day to rescue this dog?” he said. “Do I wanna be… that’s great and she’s good, but that’s not what I wanna do, I’m not that good, I don’t want to spend my day finding the owner of a dog.”
He continued, elaborating, “So I wasn’t fearful I would lose her. I wasn’t certain I wanted to be with someone like that. And then what happened, which could’ve only happened the way it did, is that she never, ever said to me, ‘You could be a little better of a person.’ She never, ever suggested that I should do that.”
Here comes the sweet part! Shepard confessed just being around Bell’s goodness won him over and, sure, even inspired a bit more goodness in him. “I just couldn’t deny the reality of how her life unfolds,” he said. “There’s something charmed about it.” And recognizing that, he “chose to move more” toward her.
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This isn’t the first time Shepard has confessed it was “not electric” — as he told Good Housekeeping magazine in 2015 — when they first met. “When I met her and her friends, I was suspicious of their unbridled happiness,” he explained. “I thought, ‘Something stinks here; they’re in a cult.’”
But clearly, Shepard got caught in Bell’s gravitational pull (and thank goodness for that!). The pair married in 2013, and they now have two daughters: Lincoln, 5, and Delta, 4.
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