Dax Shepard is fed up with the rumors surrounding his marriage to Kristen Bell.
“Another round of me being a terrible person was in the media, and like, I avoided that,” Shepard, 51, said during the Monday, November 9, episode of his “Armchair Expert” podcast. “But then it hit Kristen’s doorstep really hard, and then I got to find out everything that people are saying about me.”
The Parenthood alum then noted the “weird narrative” circulating on the internet that paints him as “controlling, abusive, now flirting with people in public, which I don’t do.”
Shepard and Bell, 46, who tied the knot in 2013, recently made headlines after the Nobody Wants This star made viral comments about her husband’s unconventional flirting method: complimenting other people.
“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,” Bell said during the October 26 episode of Shepard’s podcast. “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.’”
While Bell argued that this is a form of flirting with her because she loves seeing Shepard being kind to others, critics slammed the behavior as disrespectful and a form of emotional abuse and manipulation.
Shepard’s cohost, Monica Padman, agreed on Monday that the online discourse is “frustrating,” adding that “the internet wants a narrative” and will “find it wherever.”
Shepard said he found it disheartening to hear these rumors after growing up around abusive men himself.
“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 added, 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 added that he found the speculation “deeply insulting” to Bell.
“She’s, what, she’s sitting in the house with her two daughters and modeling some abusive relationship? Like, it’s very offensive to her,” he said.
Shepard also said Bell’s flirting comments were taken out of context.
“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 said. “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.”
Shepard continued, “I will offer publicly $10 million to any server you can find that I have given my number to, or hit on.”
He 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.”
Last year, Bell and Shepard faced controversy when the Frozen actress celebrated their 12th anniversary by recalling her husband vowing to “never kill” her despite being “heavily incentivized” to do so. Critics, including the National Network to End Domestic Violence, slammed the post for joking about domestic violence.
Back in January of this year, the couple made headlines again when Cher told Bell that she is the “better half” in her marriage to Shepard. The Zathura actor later said he thought the singer’s remark was “hysterical.”
