Tag: dax shepard

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Dax Shepard Heath Ledger Michelle Williams

Michelle Williams calls Heath Ledger ‘so special, thank god there’s Matilda’

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I have watched Michelle Williams’ new series Dying for Sex three times all the way through, now. It’s just so good, and with each viewing I become more impressed with everything the showrunners and cast put into it. I’m not finding it now, but when the show first came out in early April I saw someone online say, “I think I just watched Michelle Williams win another Emmy.” I think so too! (Though Cristin Milioti’s Penguin performance will be in the same category, and that’s strong competition.) Whether it’s an early Emmy campaign hustle or not, Michelle is still out doing press for the show. She was the guest on Monday’s episode of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, and about 40 minutes in, Dax recalls his own brief moments with Heath Ledger, saying “I thought he was just so special.” Michelle concurred, and added “thank god there’s Matilda.”

“I feel obligated to say that I knew him a little bit when he was getting sober, and I don’t know that I’ve ever fallen in love with somebody so quickly,” the presenter said of the actor. “This is one of the most special boys I’ve ever met, and I can feel the weight of the world on him in a very special way that kind of broke my heart. I was very, very sad, and I thought he was just so special.”

Audibly emotional, Williams replied, “So special, so special, thank god there’s Matilda.”

Shepard described Ledger as “this heart here that’s just leaking out everywhere,” to which Williams replied, “Yeah, an incredible sensitivity.”

Williams and Ledger welcomed their daughter Matilda in October 2005 while publicizing their Oscar-winning film Brokeback Mountain. The pair met on the set of the Ang Lee film and fell for each other immediately.

“We had a baby. But I suppose maybe it’s a good thing about being young is that you don’t have so much life experience that you can contextualize things,” Williams said of that period. “So you’re really just going with the flow.”

The Dawson’s Creek alum, who also shares three children with her partner Tommy Kail, discussed her approach to balancing children and her career.

“Kids are such great life checkers,” she mused. “They force you to put your best self in front of them. You can’t abdicate your life and your work and your own desires, but you do have to put them in check and figure out which master you’re going to serve.”

Williams went on to note that she doesn’t believe you can have it all in work and parenthood, all of the time.

“You can’t be equally good at [everything] at the exact same time, and you have to allow for that give and take, but then replenish the other things,” she explained.

“If you have a big period of being at home, you need to go back to what you’ve left unattended and put some light over there. So I think it’s just this constant back and forth, but making sure that you don’t leave one of them unattended for too long,” she concluded.

[From People]

Losing Heath Ledger was a tough one. I remember it vividly; I was newly relocated to NYC for school, went into a four hour class and when I came out, the news had broken that he was gone. Even without knowing him personally, I felt like I could see that special spirit and sensitivity Dax describes, just radiating out of Heath. My mother always describes people with that kind of presence as “pixelated” (I don’t know where she picked it up and am fairly certain she’s not using it in a traditional/established way, but I’ve taken up the usage out of my affection for her). And I could be way off the mark, here, but ever since we learned that Michelle’s oldest son with now-husband Tommy Kail is named Hart, I’ve always wondered the following: Kail is Jewish, where it’s customary to name babies after deceased loved ones by using the same first letter of the name (as opposed to the same exact name). So, is Hart for Heath? I’m sure we the public will never get that private answer, but I’d like to think so.

Photo note by CB: Top image is from the 2006 BAFTA Awards credit: Marc Larkin/Avalon. Photo of Michelle and Heath out with baby Matilda is from May, 2006 credit: PacificCoastNews.com/Avalon. Other event photos from 2006 and credit: Jacqui Wong/Avalon, Christina Radish/Avalon. Photos of Michelle and Thomas Kail credit: Tatiana/Backgrid, MediaPunch/INSTARimages,

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Cynthia Erivo Dax Shepard

Dax Shepard asked Cynthia Erivo how she wipes with her long talon-nails

dax-shepard-asked-cynthia-erivo-how-she-wipes-with-her-long-talon-nails

Cynthia Erivo’s talon-nails have become one of the talking points of the neverending Wicked promotional tour. She’s been doing different nail styles, coordinated with her couture, for the premieres and junkets. Now white people feel comfortable enough to ask her some intimate questions about how she functions with those nails. There’s already a conversation about whether some or all of this is racist or an example of racial microaggressions. It could be, but I will say this… I remember when people had similar questions about how Khloe Kardashian functioned when she had her crazy talon-nails too (and Khloe is white). So, Dax Shepard asked Cynthia THE question: how does she wipe with those talons?

Cynthia Erivo doesn’t think her talon nails get in the way of her bathroom duties. While appearing on Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard and Monica Padman to discuss Wicked, Shepard asked Erivo, 37, if her long talon nails make it difficult to wipe her behind after going to the bathroom. Before Shepard, 49, even finished asking the question, the Oscar nominee knew exactly what was coming.

“I knew you would ask that question,” she said, adding that “no one’s afraid” to ask it. “My answer is that nobody uses just their fingers to wipe their backside. You use tissue, correct? And you wipe!”

Shepard then rephrased his question. “Does the tissue go on the tip of the fingernails, or do you try to get the tissue…” he said before trailing off. “Pads of the fingers,” Erivo said.

“Great, great, great, now we’re getting somewhere,” Shepard said. “Then you’re just feeling the little tickle of the nails on the crack of your butt sometimes?” Erivo said this was not the case because she uses tissues. After joking that he would make a mitten out of toilet paper if he had nails like Erivo, Shepard asked her if she was offended or annoyed by the question.

“I’m annoyed by it. I’m, like, ‘Come on, guys,’ ” Erivo said. “But I get it, but it’s also, like, ‘I’m a functioning adult, and I’ve never walked around smelling like, you know…’ ” Shepard felt that because everyone thinks Erivo smells “so good, it begs the question, ‘How are you wiping your tush?’”

“Very well,” Erivo said, as Padman, 37, explained that the question is likely a reflection of the people asking because they couldn’t properly wipe with nails like Erivo’s.

“Here’s the thing, there are people who do not have nails who need to check how they’re wiping,” Erivo said.

[From People]

Here’s the thing – I understand the curiosity, and my curiosity would have been satiated by asking her one time and then dropping it. There was no need for Dax to go on and on about it. It was like he wanted her to demonstrate her wiping technique. CB brought up something else – Dax is well-known for being dirty and unwashed. There is a different kind of racial element to this. As in, it’s a conversation about how (some/many?) white people are afraid of soap and they can’t wrap their heads around how someone like Cynthia manages to shower daily and stay clean.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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Dax Shepard Kristen Bell Parents

Kristen Bell loved leaving her 9 and 11-year-old daughters alone all day in Copenhagen

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Kristen Bell and Dax Shepherd have made a cottage industry out of oversharing about their relationship, their two daughters and their questionable parenting decisions. They’ve shared that they let their daughters, now aged 9 and 11, drink nonalcoholic beer, and that they don’t bathe them until they smell bad. In a recent interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Bell talked about how they let their daughters roam around an amusement park in Copenhagen by themselves for entire days, reasoning that it was fine because “they’re alive.”

Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard gave “free-range parenting” a try in Denmark.

While vacationing with daughters Lincoln, 11, and Delta, 9, the couple let the little ones roam around Tivoli Gardens on their own for hours at a time, Bell confessed on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Thursday.

“We stayed at this hotel that was right at Tivoli Gardens,” the actress, 44, explained to viewers of the seven-acre amusement park.

“The hotel opens up into the theme park and so we just were kind of like, ‘Are we going to free-range parenting and roll the die here?’” she recalled. “They woke up at like 6:00 every morning.

“They scanned their bracelets to go outside,” she continued. “[We] didn’t see them for seven hours. Just running around Copenhagen.”

The Golden Globe nominee called the experience “heaven,” explaining, “We just had coffee, we played Spades, and then around 3:00 we’d be like, ‘Anybody see them?’ And then one of them would run up and need a Band-Aid or whatever.”

When host Jimmy Kimmel asked whether “that was OK,” Bell joked that their children are “both alive” and the whole family “returned home.”

The “Veronica Mars” alum noted that the girls were “allowed on the rides without an adult” since “it’s real loosey goosey over there.”

[From Page Six]

Did the girls have cell phones that work in Europe and did they check in with them? (Update: probably not.) I guess it doesn’t matter because Bell is just going to tell a parenting story to get people outraged and then sit back and act like it’s everyone else’s problem. When my son was little we lived in Switzerland and Germany. Kids would regularly ride the public buses and trams by themselves, but they did so with a group of their friends. I would not let my son be alone at 9 or 11, even with a sibling, all day at an amusement park. An hour or two maybe, but I’m American and don’t adapt that easily. Plus I watch too much true crime. People argue that these places are safer than America and that it’s culturally acceptable to leave your kids to their own devices, similar to how it used to be in the US. I wouldn’t put it past Bell and Shepherd to have researched this park and taken this vacation just to have a story to tell about leaving their kids alone. It’s probably fine and it worked out fine, but this woman knows what she’s doing telling this story.

In another interview, with E! News, Bell said, of her 11-year marriage to Shepard, “We argue about absolutely everything, but there is a foundational trust that we’ve built that keeps us together and is quite stimulated by one another’s opinions.” That sounds kind of miserable to me.

Photos credit: Getty images for Netflix, Xavier Collin / Image Press Agency / Avalon

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Dax Shepard Kids Kristen Bell Parents

Kristen Bell: ‘I talk to my kids about drugs, and we talk about sex’

kristen-bell:-‘i-talk-to-my-kids-about-drugs,-and-we-talk-about-sex’

I’m going to start this on a nice note: Kristen Bell is doing good work to combat children’s hunger. Her snack brand This Saves Lives was acquired by Good Worldwide, which will expand their charitable reach. I don’t approve of everything Kristen does, but she deserves credit for that. Real Simple magazine made her one of their Game Changers, with an accompanying interview. With Kristen, that means everything ison the table. Of course, her homelife with Dax Shepard came up. And their daughters Lincoln, nine, and Delta, eight. Kristen said that, like her interviews, when it came to their kids, she and Dax hold nothing back. There is no topic that they won’t go into with the girls, including Dax’s addiction and recovery, sex and any other “hard topic” they want to address.

Kristen Bell believes in keeping an open relationship with her daughters.

Appearing in REAL SIMPLE’s Game Changers print and digital issue — it’s first-ever celebrity cover — the Frozen star, 42, talked about why she thinks keeping total honesty with her kids is one of her keys to parenting.

“I hate the word ‘taboo.’ I think it should be stricken from the dictionary,” she tells the outlet. “There should be no topic that’s off the table for people to talk about.”

Bell notes that conversations she and husband Dax Shepard have with daughters Delta, 8, and Lincoln, 9½, might be “shocking” for some, but make sense for her parenting style.

“I know it’s shocking, but I talk to my kids about drugs, and the fact that their daddy is an addict and he’s in recovery, and we talk about sex,” she says. “There are all these ‘hard topics’ that don’t have to be if you give the person on the other end your vulnerability and a little bit of credit.”

The Good Place actress later discusses why some of the rules that she and the Armchair Expert co-host, 48, have for their family are about teaching life skills.

“Making amends and apologizing is an important thing in our family, because humans leave carnage wherever they go,” Bell says. “I really respect when someone does something wrong or hurtful and they apologize. I’m like, ‘Yeah, right on.’ That’s important.”

[From Real Simple via People]

In theory, I don’t have an issue with this. Technically I’m the same with my kids. When they were Kristen’s daughters’ ages, they would ask what something was or meant and I’d generally say, “it has to do with sex, do you want me to tell you?” and let them make that choice. Like Kristen, I didn’t want sex to be taboo, but I also didn’t want to put them into a discussion they weren’t ready to have. They’re very comfortable discussing sex with us now. There are boundaries but also a safe space for them to come to us with questions and concerns. I also agree with discussing Dax’s addiction. I think there’s a way to do that, but I don’t think parents should necessarily hide their issues from kids. I say that, though, not having openly discussed my eating disorder with my kids so I’m kind of a huge hypocrite.

This makes for a great segue to the making amends part of Kristen’s comments since apparently, I’ll be apologizing to my kids soon. I absolutely agree that apologizing is important. And I think that parents, if they are in fact wrong, should apologize to their kids. I wonder how this translates with the amount that Kristen and Dax talk about fighting and not speaking to each other because of fights. Are the girls witness to these blowups between Mom and Dad as well? And worse, are they dragged into them? Apologies are good when they are amends. But they lose their effectiveness when they are turned into weapons or punishments.

Photo credit: Real Simple, Instagram and Cover Images

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Dax Shepard Kids Kristen Bell

Dax Shephard & Kristen Bell didn’t want another kid, but had one for their oldest

dax-shephard-&-kristen-bell-didn’t-want-another-kid,-but-had-one-for-their-oldest

While appearing on The Endless Honeymoon podcast, Dax Shepard said his daughter Delta, seven, had a lot to thank her sister Lincoln, nine, for. Namely her existence. Dax said he and wife Kristen Bell wanted to stop after one kid because three was the perfect sized family for their busy lifestyles. But they realized having a second child was best for Lincoln. So they had Delta, whom of course they adore.

Dax Shepard is sharing details behind the decision to have a second child.


During an appearance on the Endless Honeymoon podcast, Shepard, 47, opened up about his two daughters — Lincoln, 9, and Delta, 7 — both of whom he shares with wife Kristen Bell.

“We did not want a second child,” he explained to a couple who called in for advice about growing their family. “It’s a bizarre conversation to start because [a family unit of three] is perfect, and it’s so much easier. You can take that little Subway sandwich anywhere, as I’m sure you guys are doing.”

The Parenthood alum explained that as Lincoln started growing, he and Bell realized it may be beneficial to have a second child so she can have a “playmate,” not just on their travels, but for the long haul of life.

“One is, we travel a lot. It’s not fair to bring this little human everywhere we go and deal only with adults. Like, we owe it to her to give her a playmate that travels with us everywhere,” he explained. “We love [Lincoln] enough to do something we don’t really wanna do, which is have a second, because we were so absolutely happy with just the one.”


Another reason for the decision, he later quipped, was to minimize the chances for Lincoln to become “spoiled” as an only child.

“Our kids already are so privileged beyond belief,” he said. “It rattles both of us being from very, you know, modest backgrounds. So, to make the spoiled bitch, my first born, live in the same room with another person [when she gets older] and have to share everything, like, I needed [Lincoln to learn] the force of compromise and sharing discomfort because I wasn’t going to give it to her any other way. So we just thought it would be really helpful to make her a better person, to have to deal with someone else.”

Another piece of advice Shepard gave was, should anyone decide to have a second child, to do it “as quick as possible.” His own daughters were born 20 months apart.

“Our kids are under two years apart, and for a minute that was difficult because you know, when you’re 5 and the baby is 3, that’s no fun,” he said. “I will say the corner we’ve turned is, like, now they party. Not only do they party together, they’re united against us, which I love.”

He added, “If I’m giving it to one of the girls, the other one comes over, ‘You’re not being nice to Lincoln. You didn’t listen to what she said.’ And I’m like, ‘That’s right. That’s your role. You guys gang up and kill me. It’s you two against the world.’ That stuff, I think, the lesser the age gap the easier it is to achieve.”

[From Yahoo]

I know plenty of you have already dismissed all of this because you dislike both Kristen and Dax, so – mm’kay. For those of you still with me, obviously the only real family planning advice is to do what you’re comfortable with. My take on what Dax said is mixed. I understand his logic about one child being easier to travel with. When they’re young, the difference of traveling with one child vs. two young children is huge. But when they get older, it’s not an issue, they manage themselves. (It is, however, a lot more expensive!) I agreed with him on the playmate thing and wanted more than one kid for that reason. However, that was because I knew I wasn’t going to be enough for my kid. I know plenty of single kids who loved being only children. It’s not sure Dax’s universal logic. The spoiled brat point I don’t get. I would think that’s on them not to spoil however many kids they have.

As for age spacing, meh. I had my kids close together due to my age. They’re best friends. My mother had my brothers and I with years between us because of blood type issues. We’re best friends. All involved looked out for each other, regardless of how close or far they were spaced. I’ve always felt the relationship of the siblings was the personalities involved (including the parents) and not the age gap.

Photo credit: Instagram

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Dax Shepard Kids Kristen Bell

Kristen Bell’s daughters sleep in the same room with her and Dax, which smells bad

kristen-bell’s-daughters-sleep-in-the-same-room-with-her-and-dax,-which-smells-bad

Kristen Bell is promoting her new Netflix series The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window. It’s next up in my queue of things to watch because I like a good parody. I’ve heard it takes some unexpected turns, as well, so I’m hopeful. I’m not hopeful for her promotional tour, though. In the comfort of her husband’s podcast, Armchair Expert, Kristen decided to talk about her kids and nasty smells in the bedroom. Much like her new series, this story took an unexpected turn. Kristen started by telling the listeners that their two daughters, Delta, seven, and Lincoln, eight, sleep in their bedroom. One day, a horrible smell began to infiltrate the room. Of course, we assume this links back to their lack of bathing practices. But that wasn’t it. The family thought it was excessive gas. The punchline, it turned out, was that Dax had filled their water mattress pad with a protein shake and it had rotted. What the what?!

Kristen Bell shared another odd detail about her and husband Dax Shepard’s marriage – they allow daughters Lincoln, 8, and Delta, 7, to sleep in their bedroom.

“In our bedroom, you know, the girls sleep on the floor of our bedroom,” Bell, 41, revealed during the latest episode of Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast.


Bell made the revelation after explaining to listeners that she started to “smell a really raunchy smell” in their room a few nights ago.

“I’m like, ‘Who’s farting?’ All three of them are like, ‘Sorry, it’s me,’” she recalled. “So I go, ‘OK, my family has gas, big [deal].’ I wake up in the morning and I go, ‘Wow, nobody’s gas has dissipated, but it also smells like it’s burning.’”

When the “rotten, burning garbage”-like smell didn’t go away, Bell said she washed all of the sheets, opened the room’s French doors and even lit some candles, but nothing seemed to do the trick.

“Now, Delta, the little one, she is smell sensitive,” Bell said of her youngest daughter. “So she goes, ‘You know what, I do smell it.’ Lincoln and Dax can’t be bothered, so Delta and I are, well, being gaslit.”

Shepard, 47, then chimed in, telling fans that he asked his daughters to check the room for dog poo, to no avail. Bell eventually asked Lincoln to help her get to the bottom of it.

“I lean down and smell the mattress, Dax’s corner, his feet corner of the mattress, and I almost hit the deck. I almost passed out it was so strong,” Bell said, revealing that her husband accidentally filled their OOLER mattress pad with an old protein shake, instead of water.

“So I take it off, I put it in the tub, I try to drain the water out of it, that doesn’t really work. Dax takes it downstairs and hooks up the power washer to it to push everything out of the tubes.”

Basically, “don’t put a protein shake in your OOLER,” Bell advised.

[From Page Six]

If, like me, you were wondering what the hell an OOLER mattress pad is, it’s a $1500 water based, temperature control pad used for perfect sleep. I started this story thinking ‘what fancy rich person crap is this’? and now I’m looking around for something to sell so I can have one. However, the question remains – who fills it with a protein shake?! I assume the water required to fill the pad must be filtered or clarified or blessed by butterflies from Argentina or something but still, how similar can those bottles be? I can understand why it took so long for Kristen to identify the smell, because who would think their mattress was rotting from the inside? The power washer was a good idea, but my money is on they had to get a new pad. You can’t ever get rid of a smell like that. I hate that I can taste this story on the roof of my mouth.

Most outlets are focusing on the fact that Delta and Lincoln sleep with the couple in their room. Two years ago, Kristen said the girls shared a bedroom in the hope that they would build character. She told SELF, “I think their lives will be easier than most other people’s on the planet, and to develop a good character, it’s important to always be going through something.” Her logic was that the girls could negotiate figuring out how to share a space together as their challenge. To Kristen’s credit, she acknowledged if that was the worst thing that happened to them, they were pretty well off. I don’t know how sleeping in their parent’s room factors into the whole character-building plan. I assume that’s why they’re on the floor and not on the bed. But I think we’re supposed to be asking more outrageous questions like, how do you guys have sex? I’m still struggling with the rotten shake for a bed, though. I don’t want to think of anyone having sex in that room.


Photo credit Instagram, InStar Images and Backgrid

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Dax Shepard health

Dax Shepard had the hiccups for over two days and it sounds awful

dax-shepard-had-the-hiccups-for-over-two-days-and-it-sounds-awful



Dax Shepard recently shared two videos to Instagram where he’s hiccupping. His wife Kristen Bell is taping him and asks him how it’s going. In the first video he’s hiccupping as he explains that he’s been having hiccups for 20 hours almost, with an hour or two that they went away. In the next video Dax looks miserable, says it’s escalated and that he’s been vomiting. In the caption he wrote that he was hiccupping for 50 hours but that he’s been hiccup free for five days. I’m going to let People explain it because I don’t want to transcribe the video and that’s where I first saw this story:

In the first clip, Shepard’s wife Kristen Bell approaches her seemingly uncomfortable husband with a camera and asks, “How’s it going?”

“It’s still funny,” he replies, though he initially doesn’t crack a smile. Bell, 41, begins to giggle behind the camera, and Shepard chuckles in response.

[Shepard] says his hiccups had begun around 9 p.m. nearly 24 hours prior. Bell says she could hear Shepard hiccuping “all night long.”

“They went away for stretches today,” he explains, clearing his throat multiple times as he speaks. “A couple hours in the afternoon, and I want to say there was an hour of freedom [elsewhere].”

In the second clip, Shepard says his condition has “escalated” to the point of doing “a good deal of hiccup-induced puking.”

“Every breath,” he says as he attempts to collect himself.

[From People]

I googled “hiccups side effect of” and the first suggested search term was “steroids.” You know where I’m going with this. Dax has admitted being on “heavy testosterone” to bulk up just because he wanted to, not for a role or anything. The longest I’ve ever had hiccups was probably 45 minutes and it wasn’t fun at all. Watching the videos made me feel sympathetically sick to my stomach. I wouldn’t wish chronic hiccups on anyone (except Trump, Tucker Carlson, Piers Morgan, JK Rowling, Josh Duggar – ok that’s not true), it sounds awful. I’m just saying there might be a reason for it other than it just being random. He’s a podcaster and depending on when he got this it may have kept him from working. Plus, and I mean this sincerely, it’s hard to get medical care now because antivaxxer covid patients are clogging up the hospitals. I’m glad to hear he’s OK now.

The Today Show has some tips from an expert on how to stop hiccupping, including drinking water while trying not to breathe in and breathing into a paper bag. The key is to increase the CO2 in your bloodstream. I’m sure he tried them all.