Actor Kristen Bell (The Good Place, Frozen, Veronica Mars) has a happy marriage that requires a lot of work, and she’s good with that. She considered a life in the theater as a student at NYU, even making it to Broadway before graduation. However, on a whim, she moved to Los Angeles and has been starring in movies and TV ever since. Like her most memorable characters, Bell is plucky, relatable, and very funny. That’s her lane and she’s good with that, too. She tells Alec, at 40, she’s more comfortable than ever in her skin, more aware of her voice and what she needs to be happy, lessons she strives to model every day for her daughters, and her legions of devoted fans.
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This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from My Heart Radio. My guest today is Kristen Bell, a true force of nature. Kristen is a classically trained actor who landed a role on Broadway and a revival of the Crucible with Liam Neeson and Laura Lenny before she even graduated college on a whim. She and a friend moved to l A soon after, and she's been starring in TV and movies ever since. From her breakout role as the teenage private detective Veronica Mars, to Princess Anna in the Frozen movies to the more recent Eleanor Shellstrap on NBC's The Good Place, Kristen has made her name by being plucky, relatable, and when the role calls for it, very funny. I caught up with Kristen Bell in Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband, the actor and podcaster Dax Shepherd, and their two young daughters. Currently, I'm in a motor home parked on our front lawn at all times because I'm married to hill Billy. Actually we just got it a couple of days ago over um over quarantine. His main objective was to buy a motor home because we do go camping and go to this glamous sand dunes a couple of times a year, so we we rent motor homes. But we found a good deal and when in Texas he went down to get it, he drove it back and it is now. I'm not gonna I'm not joking with you right now. Look at where it's sitting. So this is the motor home, right and that's my house. That's my house, So that's my front window. Were to the definition of hillbilly is you have a house, you're both working, you're both doing well. You buy a house worth millions of dollars in l A. And your husband was like, I want to have a motor home on the front law and baby, Um, I'm lucky. This man has all his teeth. Honestly, I'm lucky he has all his teeth. That's the truth. But I will give him credit. She's gorgeous. Her name is big Brown. She's absolutely ship brown color. And it's sitting right outside my front window. And I don't hate it. I love it. We we come out here and play in it, and we're gonna plan on camping in it. A ton and I'm not I'm not mad at it. How's the quarantine going for you with your family? Shockingly okay? I mean, you know, mainly because of our privilege. We don't live in a one room apartment. We like have a backyard, we can go outside and and uh, my my kids can you know, run around the house again, because we've got a house with a couple of bedrooms. So I'm incredibly grateful for that. My my husband and I started out quarantine like in the midst of a big fight, like you know those sort of not fight but yes fight, those like every three years, that sort of marriage house cleaning that has to happen, where like the resentments have been built and it's coming to a head and you're both going to go back to the therapist. And we were like right there, and then the doors closed on the whole world and we were like, oh shit, Yeah, you're hiking through a cave and the walls collapsed and you're stuck inside the cave together. Yeah. It was intense to say the least, but it did force us to talk vulnerably in order to get over some of the resentments in the sort of housekeeping that needed to happen. About how we were not meeting each other's love languages, etcetera, etcetera, and we did it pretty well. How does he not meet your love language? Well? Or I don't meet his, that's the question. So everybody has different ways that they feel that they are loved. Right, for me, it's pre production. If if I come home from work and you have ordered me food, there's a burrito in the fridge. For me, I'm like, damn, this guy loves me. He was thinking she might be home from work and she might want a burrito like he thought about me. For him, it's meeting him at the door. He could give a ship what's in the fridge. He doesn't care if I've ordered him dinner. So if I'm sitting up in my bedroom where I'm playing with the girls, or I'm on my computer or watching TV and I don't sort of like meet him with a hug, He's like, I could care less what's in the fridge. I want to see you. I want His is very much physical affection, as in like eye contact, hand on the shoulder when we're on the couch. He wants to be snuggling. Yes, I love you, and which we do all the time. But you know, after thirteen years, it does become a sort of passing phrase, which we try not to make it. Whereas I'm less um physical, I don't need anyone to jump up, I want I'm like, everybody stay stated, I'm fine. I'm the mom, and I'm you know, doing my own thing, and I want to take care of everybody else. But it was just stuff like that, and I would be like, but I ordered you dinner. He's like, but I don't care about dinner. I want you to get up off the couch and give me a hug. And so it's those little things love language wise, where we have to remember that the other person needs something that we don't need. So we have to think in the other person's love language in order to properly show what we feel. One time I was at a party and Seinfeld is at another table. They cut up the couples so that Jessica was at my table and I'm sitting there with Jessica Seinfeld and we're talking, and I said to her, you realize that if you look him in the eye every day, and look him in the antica and really let it count, let it breathe, and say, Jerry, I love you more than anything in the world. He will do whatever you ask him to do for the rest of your life. And she started to cry. She had like tears from look, I'm from that school, like I want you to still be my girlfriend. I want the romance I want we have. My wife and I are locked in a big house with five kids. So as I tell people, it's like the little rascals meets the shining every day here at my house. But I said to my wife, you know, if you just said that to me, took two seconds to tell me that every day I could go on that that's the oxygen that I need, you know. Yeah, And it's it's really healthy to be able to communicate that to your partner and not to make any no, you know, no one can be generalized or I don't want to make this broad and sweeping. But I've known a lot of a group of men like that where it actually is quite simple. It's just presence. It's being uh present with them and communicative in the simplest way of just a reminder that the foundation exists and that you are still attracted to and love them. Whereas my love language is like let's go I'm a human doing and not a human being. I'm working on that in therapy, becoming less of a human doing. Why now, what do you think? What are the pitfalls of the one versus the other? Why? Well, a human being exists more a human doing, has a huge to do list and is accomplishes a ton. But then maybe on your deathbed you're like, did I even experience any of it? Because I've got my fingers in a lot of different pots and I'm going, going, going, all the time. And that's why I like, I think of someone, order them dinner, scratch it off my list. That proves I love them. That doesn't work for everyone. That doesn't work for everyone, Alec, I'm learning for you. Was show business in the blood in the family? Was your show business people in your family? No? Well, my father is a news director still is UM. So he was the only person that was ever I mean, he was on the radio for a while. He's got a voice like yours is just smooth and wonderful. And I was the only one that ever um showed any signs of wanting to perform. And it wasn't really even wanting an audience so much as I sang a lot when I was little. I have a very musical brain and a very I'm very auditorially sensitive, like I can't really have a conversation when music is on. I feel almost like I'm hearing voices inside my head because such a big portion of my brain focuses on the music, which is annoying and also great. But so I sang a lot when I was little, and then my mom got me into voice lessons and I studied like Operetta's for a year or two, and then in my ninth grade year, my teacher gave me after school homework of Green Finch and linnet Bird from Sweeney Todd. And I had never sang in English before, I was only singing in Italian, and I was like, oh my god, what is this. I can understand this character's perspective. So then I became obsessed with musical theater. But again, no one else did it. And my father was the only one that was hesitant, not in a way that would ever hold me back, but just like he hires and fires the journalists at his station, and so he'll watch a new news reporter and be like, I can't hire her, I can't hire him. And he was scared of the rejection, but other than that hesitation, everyone was like, sure, we don't know what you're doing, but good luck. And they were pretty supportive. But no one else was in performance of any kind. Actor Kristen Bell, that early introduction to Sondheim took her from the suburbs of Detroit to New York City. Another actress with a flair for comedy, as Ellie Kemper, We talked about her getting cast as the unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. They basically said, we're developing a new show. We don't know what it is, but good do you have met you? We met in May and then I met them again in July and they pitched the actual idea to me. I thought they were joking because the premise of the show I know, and I was like, they were pranking me. You can hear the rest of my conversation with Ellie Kemper a Here's the thing dot org. After the break, we talked about what advice Kristen offers to aspiring actors today. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here is the thing we're talking today with Kristin Bell. She discovered her love for acting in middle school. I started doing a lot of like local theater in Detroit, and then it was less of a like putting a stake in the ground saying this is what I'm gonna do. And what happened was I was sixteen and went into Mr Franklin's office in my high school when he's like the guy who helps you pick colleges in the high school, and he was like, well, you want to pick you know, college, that a career, that's something you love, So what do you love? And I was like, well, I love doing musical theater. He goes, well, you can study theater and I was like, great, so much thanks by Like I never it was, it just occurred to me. It never occurred to me to change what I loved. And I was like, well, I guess just keep doing what I'm doing. And where'd you go? N y U. I applied early admission to n y U, and I told my parents I sent in my Northwestern application that I didn't because I wanted I put all my focus on early admission in n y U. Thankfully I got in. Then I moved to New York and I was in the Tish School of the Arts for two and a half years and then I left my middle of my third year because I booked Tom Sawyer and then The Crucible with Liam Neeson and Laura Lenny, and then Reefer Madness, and then a couple of shows in New York, and then moved to d C to do the Kennedy Center uh Sondheim Rep. And then I moved to l A on a whim. So it was all theater. You didn't finish you, No, I did not. I do not have a degree in anything I went there. I went to gw in Washington for a pre law program, but finished in theater at n y U. I left there in nineteen eighty but went back in to graduate fourteen years later. Did you have to take a class because so much of their grades around attendance. They wig ave to all my acting classes from my practical experience acting the last fourteen years. And I had to write a paper. And I wrote a sixty five page paper on the applicability of method acting to the career of someone who was still active in film and theater. And there was only one person who met the criterion. I interviewed Pacino for nine hours at his house up in West just Oh. I wonder for you, I mean, you're obviously from a very different generation than I am, and you're much younger than I am. What's your advice to young actors, because I sometimes struggle with that whether they should study acting in college. It's expensive, Like I'll say to them if I had it to do over again, get a degree in a subject where you can just read a lot of great books, philosophy, literature, history, because this is the great time for you to read, because as I've gotten older, the thing I missed most is time to read. And then I'll say to them, you go take acting classes somewhere. How do you feel about that? I think that's actually now, in my infinite wisdom, after turning forty, I think that that's probably the right thing to say a because previously my only critique of n y U was that I didn't feel that they gave um enough practical actors experience, Like we once in a while had like a casting director come in, but it was really like there was this you were so built up because you were studying all these fancy plays and performing them, but you didn't realize how small your world was. And I remember sneaking out of classes to go audition because I had gotten an agent right when I moved to New York. And I also it was in my favor that I looked a lot younger than I was, So when I was eighteen, I was still playing thirteen and I remember sneaking out and once I was caught and they were like, you shouldn't be auditioning, And I'm like, well, what the hell are you training me for? Like if I'm not supposed to be auditioning, because the nerves you feel when you audition can be debilitating for the vast majority of us, Like even I mean I still have them sometimes, but definitely had them early on. And every actor I know that's working was like, oh yeah, I used to get super nervous, so nervous that I, you know, choke all my words, or that I would burp, or that I would have the shakes or whatever. I think you need to learn how to handle that as much as you need to learn how to study these classic plays. I think that's an incredib like just getting ahold of your being is incredibly important. And I didn't. I don't feel like there was enough stress put on that about how do you manage your cortisol levels when you really really want something, so I think getting into scary situations. I was in this beautiful, little like um bubble of studying Alexander technique. And when I explained that to my husband and he was like, well, what is that, I'm like, what's sort of like body work and you're, you know, you're in like loose clothes and you're touching each other. And he's like, you did this in fucking college. And so now he always jokes, he's like, let's just throw some sweatpants on, let's work it out Alexander style. But I think that's very safe, and I don't think acting safe or should be safe. The first job I had, I got a job on a soap opera in New York, and I thought to myself, this is I mean, privately, I'm sitting there on the set and I say the same thing every day I commit here. I'm like, oh, Greta, I love you. Oh God, Greta, if you only knew how much I love you, Greta, please understand. And I'd be on the subway trying to memorize my lines. It was all such a pain in the acid, and then it hit me, this is hard to do well. The udahg and respect for acting things like the first thing you gotta get to is that it's not easy even if you have a shitty part. I tell people, just be One of the best things in the movie, even if you you were walking and go dinner, is serve and learning where you fit into because I also find there's so much bringing people up in a lot of like acting classes that I took of, like well where are you coming from? Where are you coming from? And to be honest, the thing that I've learned mainly in film and television is when I read a script, now I'm not looking at it from my point of view, I'm looking at it from the director's point of view because I'm going and and here's the other thing is sometimes it doesn't give a hoot if I feel it, it matters if the audience feels it. So like I could say I want to do a hundred more till I feel it, and I hope that someone in the crew would go, no, no thanks. We need to go home to our families because we are also human beings employed in the same industry that you are. It doesn't matter. You have to you have to trust in the director that they're getting what they need to get. But you really have to be thinking about is the audience feeling this and whether you need to just trust the director, you need to watch the take, whatever it is. But it's about how you fit into a bigger story. And I don't necessarily know that that was ever taught to me until I started getting really good direction and saying, well, I feel like my character would do this, and then like, you know, I don't know someone like I was on Deadwood in the in the very beginning of my career, and David Milt would be like, well, I don't, but but this is what I need to have happen. Oh my god, the best has like eight rescue dogs following him around on the set. I don't know how I got this job un Dead when I only did a couple episodes, but it was a very cool role. It was like a young girl who came into town with her brother and she starts working at the horehouse and then she tries to like take everyone for a ride, and she sleeps with Kim's character and she stabs powers booth and it was and then I get beaten and shot in the center of town, right, so I only read the sweet scenes, and then when I got the role, I read the sort of other side of her where she goes crazy. And I said to him like, I don't know if I can do this, and he goes, no, I know you can. And then I went home and I felt so insecure. I'm like, does he think I'm evil? Because these scenes are really evil. So I had a great time working with him, but I also found that he was one of the kindest people I've ever worked with. Every Friday on Deadwood, that was a difficult show to shoot. It was in Santa Clarita. There were a ton of horses, which means their ship smell everywhere. There was at the atmosphere that they pump in, which means everyone's breathing in dust. All of these things, tight corsets, blah blah blah. Wasn't physically comfortable long hours. And every Friday at lunchtime, he would gather everybody into the one of the saloons and I would watch him give away ten dollars. He'd put in a fish bowl, all these little tickets and he'd say, okay for a sevent d prize. Joe Gripp and he'd say thank you, so much for working here. I love you guys. Okay for a two hundred dollar prize and he would just give away a ton of his money as he has created numerous shows, and you know, what, can I tell you something? So I said to myself when I saw him do it, I was like, I'm gonna do that if I ever make it, I'm gonna do that that. I'm going to do that one day. This is going to be my example. And I've done it on my last couple of shows and it feels you can't imagine a better feeling. And I expect I did it for I just finished a movie called Queen Pins that was an indie that spent all of our budget on COVID safety, and I mean COVID safety like you have never seen. Because I was so hesitant to work. We shot it. We had a huge COVID team. Everyone got PCRs every day, not just rapids. You had to have a K of ninety five. They had to bring an air scrubbers every hour to scrub the entire air in the room. No more than twelve people. And I knew it was stressful for people, and I was like, I'm gonna milch it. I'm gonna milt it. And it was so wonderful. But here's what I did, because I also from you know, just reading freakonomics. You just have to incentivize people. So I said to our COVID consultants, who were from U C. L A. I was like, what if we just incentivize them. What if I get grub hub to give us everybody two fifty dollar gift certificates so they're encouraged to eat at home, and then the next week we get the in and out truck, and then then and then the other week subsequent weeks, I put five or ten grand in a bucket and I say, this is the I did not get COVID this week bucket, And you're only in here if you didn't get COVID. And we pull a name, and I gotta say nobody got COVID because everyone wanted to be in the bucket. Oh well, I'm sure some people were sitting there going, well, it's the least you can do it. But five grants into the fish bolshop with all that frozen money. She got to God, Oh, you'd think right. I've been doing some animated films. I did the movie Boss Baby and we're just finishing the sequel now. People say to me, how do you feel doing that? I'm like, the is the greatest movie I've ever made. I love doing those movies because the audience so receptive as kids, you know, and here you are to have been part of this, like unbelievably Titanic success. Was that fun for you? So fun? It's been fantastic, And it's been the biggest honor to be somehow important to children that you've never met, so much so that you can make someone's day, or that you can send a kid who is in the hospital a message, and it really you can bring a smile to someone's face, and that is something I do not take lightly. I have a lot of respect for the fact that I have that little superpower now and I use it as much as I possibly can. You know, your generation, you're so youthful looking and you're just turned forty, and I'm want to ask you about that. What's that been like for you in terms of because you still look so young, what's changed for you about the business and what you want now that you've been doing it for twenty two years. So in the beginning of my career up until the last I would say five or six years. I was just hungry and I was willing to stay on that hamster wheel of I need to read everything. Who got that? Who should I be meeting? Is there a new best director that I should be having? In general, with all the things that you think you need to do. And I was getting offered a lot of romantic comedies or things that were I felt like I had done, and I just desperately wanted like the new Michelle Williams script, you know what I mean. I was like, I just want to be like an indie actor and I want to be like respected. And my husband would sit in bed and he's like, why don't you stay in your lane? It's so much funner when you stay in your lane. You like you can spread your wings, but don't disregard what you have because some girl who's an actress right now is like, God, I just want to be a goofy girl in a rom com. Somebody is saying that right now, and you have that opportunity. Don't ship on that. And like also sometimes he's like, Christen, you're not as good to an actress is Michelle Williams. So she's gonna get the part, and I'm like, Okay, your said yeah, but he's not. No, he's right though. Also he's just like and guess what else, Michelle Williams can't be as quirky and as funny in a rom coom as you can, Like everyone has a lane, and he was he is all about moving into acceptance mode and you know, expectations are resentments waiting to happen, all these little a phrases he has that are that are helpful when applied correctly, and I just felt like, oh, yeah, it really is just my ego that I want to be like I don't know if it's acknowledged or be in every category. And the moment I said, you know what, I have a thing, right, I have a thing and it's a quirky, weird, funny, bubbly fun thing that's can be snarky and I love doing it. I do it pretty well. Why not lean into it? And that is when I felt like I started becoming happier when I stopped trying to be in everyone else's category. But what's the little piece of you in the corner, Like, forget about Michelle Williams, what's the thing you so part of you that would really love to do something that you just don't think you'll ever get a chance to do that you really would love to try. Oh, I mean something dark and serious, obviously, because I am a pretty classically trained actor, and I would love to do that. And I did that in the beginning. I mean Deadwood was a little that heavy drama really interests me. But I also know that I have a five and a seven year old. It is a priority to me how I act when I go home. And it is true that sometimes you can take a little bit of baggage home or you'll just be in a sour mood. But if you're making a comedy with Mike, sure all day, chances are you're going to come home in a pretty good mood, you know what I mean. And I've just kind of prioritized my well being as Kristen, like I always like to say, I like being an actress, but I love being Kristen. So I've prioritized that a little bit more than my like desire to spread my wings or prove to people that I can be some dramatic actress. What do you want to do that you haven't done? Um sing on Broadway? Girl, you can do that no, no, no. Do you like singing? Can you have like a proper more musical theater singing voice if you don't put on an affectation. I just don't have the vocal call. I don't have the chops and the breath. It's it's like, you know that music and singing and being able to imitate people and impersonate people. There's a fine line between the two. It's an ear. You have an ear, and I have a good ear and I and I love music and I listen to people singing and I go, oh my god. I just to be able to do that, but I don't have the equipment. But you know what that it is a muscle. I mean, look, nobody's gonna wake up one morning and sound like normal Leo butts right. That doesn't happen to everybody, But I will say it is a muscle. It is like a bicep. Like when I'm out of Like when Adina and I get called for to do some concert, we call each other. We're like a funk. When's the last time you practice? Because the reality is you shave notes off your top and you shave notes off your bottom, just like you do a bicep like you can. If you pump iron every day, your muscle gets bigger, your breath control, your ability to tap into your diaphragm, and your simplified your vocal range. It goes up with practice, and it is possible. If you have an ear for tone, it is possible to expand that muscle. Well, there's times I will say that, I mean, you know, you relax, you get some sleep, you're arrested, your voice to your vocal cords fall into a certain line. There's times that I have, you know, and I'm not being cute about this, but the's time that I would sing in the shower and I think, my God, listen to me, My God, can you believe this? I'm like, you know, Charles as Nevoir has nothing on me. And my husband is going through a singing phase and it nothing is cuter to me. So he's borderline tone deaf, but he loves to sing. Okay, And here's what happened. Let me set the scene in my household. My kids could give a shit about Frozen, truly and completely. They don't want me to talk about it. They don't want to know. I minute, because you're supposed to rebel against your mom thinks she does her uncool. So they're into a ton of they love boss Baby but like frozen. They're like it's fine. So I can't even sing to them. I try to sing them to sleep there like once in a while they'll let me do it, and I'm like, I'm you know, obviously that's a burn on me. So we're doing this new UM cartoon for Stephen Conrad called Ultra City Smith's and it's a musical. And he asked Dax and I if we'd be involved because we were weirdly like just those people who didn't know Stephen Conrad, but we're like championing the Patriot when it was out, like nobody's watching this show. It's brilliant UM. So he contacted us. We were super flattered. He's like, it's a musical. UM. He hires us. We're playing this married couple. And then Dax did a recording the other day and he sang for Stephen Conrad, like just a little bit of He's sang some Whalen Jennings or something, and Stephen was like that was great. That was really great, Dax, this is gonna work out well. Dax came home in the absolute cutest mood I've ever seen him in. And he has been asking me to tape him on my telephone singing songs, and he's been posting things online of him singing songs he's in Yes on Instagram, Yes, and it's so please watch it. It's so cute. The whole time he was driving big Brown home, he was like, he's got his camera on his little dashboard and he's like, yeah, PLEASESE really let me go. It's so cute to me. Now, Veronica Mars is when I first became aware of you, and that was a big success for you, and then you did good place, you know, and you also come from a generation of people which are a lot more self disclosing about some of the things you've gone through in your life. And I'm like, you know, a long time ago, when I was first coming, there were people who they just stayed behind that wall like you were never going to find that anything about their private life. And also there were publicity arms of studios and networks that worked aggressively to protect the reputations of their stars. That does not exist anymore, as opposed to Warner Brothers, where you go down one hallway and there's the movie division, and you go down another hallway and there's the TV division. Then you got in another hallway and TMZ is there. Come on, I know I have such an issue with that as well. I'm like, how do you run all of these organizations? Why do you want me to work for you? And then you're trying to kill me. I could not agree more. My husband and I just agree on things in the world. We argue all the time, but we do not go to bed angry, and we have a beautiful marriage and we are able to make it work because we have this mutual respect. We have a desire for vulnerability. When we first started dating, we tried to keep it secret because we didn't want to be hunt. That was when like TMC was starting, you know, liket and fourteen years ago, and they were starting to like hunt people really on the street with cameras and it was scary and it just feels predator and prey um. But after a while, especially when social media you sort of started to own it and you were able to post your own things. We kind of went through this little metamorphosis. Not with our children because we keep them very separated and we keep them very private. But I have a big, big maternal chip on my shoulder, and I feel like if I'm okay being vulnerable and talking about my flaws and my marriage, especially if it can be an example for someone else, so I'm ready to, Like, I guess I'm willing to take that hit. Like Jax and I talked about what we fight about public lee, I talk about my fears and anxiety, about the fact that I suffer from anxiety and depression. And every time I'm honest and vulnerable, the reaction that I get not from like the TMZ crewd but the reaction I get from just uh engagement with fans or on social media or whatever is always positive and it keeps me going and a reminder of like, oh yeah, we're really looking to connect. And I suppose that I've just put the connecting with people above any sort of like clandestine existence that I could give you, because I wouldn't be good at that anyway. I'm too much of a talker, you know what I mean. It doesn't bother me so much to be such an open book. I kind of like it. But I also think that what is the silver lining of some kind of social media like Instagram. Well, it's kept the paparazzi away from my house because I'm posting all the pictures online myself. Yeah, exactly, I've preempted that. There's nothing you can get unless my wife is pregnant, unless you get me, you know, slipping on the ice and falling on my ass or something, you know, something that you're after. But hopefully your wife will post that picture of you calling and they still won't have to get it. You know, my wife would make a movie out of that. Believe she loves to let the air out of me, she always say. But one thing about this age, of this kind of self disclosure is that it gives me a chance. I'm going to tell the story. I want to talk about how I didn't drink and I didn't take drugs all through high school, very little minimum because I couldn't afford it. I didn't have any money. And when I finally had money in my pocket from working in this business I had. If I had a hundred bucks in my pocket, I was like, well, let's go have that drug and alcohol problem we've been putting off for the last five years. You know. But what do you say to people in terms of how they can seek help. Do you actively try to support people that way and say you've got to go and ask for help? Oh you mean, like if I'm talking about like anxiety and depression or or or anything like that, anything whatever the issue is. Oh yeah, well, I mean, look, I'm also like having just come out of like early stage motherhood. I you know, there's so much of I did not experience it, but I know the world of like feeling insecure as a new mom, And you're not doing this right. So I try to be very clear in that there are many different ways to find a solution to a problem. Let's just start with the basic math, right, some people, we know people. We have people in common that have stopped drugs and alcohol that have not gone to a a and we we also have people in common that did need it, like you know, my husband does. And there are many different ways to find a solution. So if it's like someone saying I'm depressed or anxious or I'm having problems in my marriage, if I were to respond, or if I were to say anything on the subject, it would be There are a variety of resources out there for talking about anxiety and depression. One is um talk to someone close in your family, open up more, start exercising. Exercising is one of the best things you can do for your mental health. You can talk to a psychologist or a psychiatrist, a medication maybe in your future, it may not be because that's not the only way. That's how I solve it. I've been on an antidepressant for years, but that's not for everyone, and I'm very clear about that. Um And then I'm also just a big I'm a therapy pusher. I love therapy. I am. I think it's Yeah, I think it's great. I mean also, I'm not opposed to any of the new kinds. I just don't know much about them. But I know when I know. I have a therapist who the first time I sat down with him, his name is Harry. He's an excellent human being. I started talking and he said, doing his hold on the second, I'm just gonna tell you, if you want me to take your hundred dollars percession and listen to you event I am so here for you. If you'd like a solution, just let me know. And I was like, uh, who, what? Who does this man think? He is being so blunt with me? But I was also very attracted to that kind of personality, which is obviously why I married my husband. The blunt cut to the chase talkers because I'm not that person. I'm a rambler. So when I said that, I I mean when he said that, I was so intrigued. I was like, well, wait a minute. Of course I want a solution. He was like, Okay, well I can tell you this. You plus this issue equals chaos. Are you in the rumor? Is this issue in the room? And I was like, okay, um, I guess this issue is in the room. This person or thing I was talking about I am, and it just I like the idea that are there are solutions out there. I'm a I'm a fixer, and I get very excited about Okay, well that's not working. Pivot find a new way to do it, because there's always a better way to do it. Kristen Bell last year she launched Happy Dance, a CBD bath and body product line designed specifically to offer some self care for other busy moms that She recently published her first children's book, The World Needs More Purple People, in hopes of encouraging more conversations in these polarized times about what we have in common. More on that after the break. If you like Here's the Thing, don't keep it to yourself. Tell a friend. You can subscribe to Here's the Thing on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, leave us a review. Thanks for listening. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Actor Kristen Bell has been with her husband, actor Dax Shepherd since two thousand seven. The two are very open about the good, the bad, and the challenges of a long term relationship. I wanted to ask Kristen if it helps to have a partner who was also in the business. Yeah. I mean, you know, both of us have ego sensitivity issues and it sort of depends on how often we've worked. If one of us hasn't worked in six months, one of us can start to feel low. But again we're both aware of that because of therapy. I would say for the most part, I see it as a plus. And perhaps that's because of who the man Dax is um but I know that he like we're not. He doesn't get down on me about hours because he knows. If I say I'm home at three, the scene could take till ten. It's nice not to have to deal with confusion if you have someone who's working a nine to five. Just nice to be with somebody that gets and it gets it. And also Dax is a really good director. He has written and directed a couple of movies. He wrote like a love letter to me are. His first movie was this UM independent movie called Hit and Run, and it was about a guy who was in UH witness protection program and his girlfriend finds out and they have to go on this chase away from the bad guys, and it's like does she want to go? Does she still trust him? And it literally was a metaphor for our first year of dating. I didn't know what a drug addict was or how they operated. I mean I grew up in a small town in Michigan, just outside of Detroit, where it was like, well, drugs are bad, bad people do drugs and that was the end of the conversation. And I didn't understand anything about addiction. So when he used to sit at the dinner table again and tell me like, oh, this one time I I did seventy pills. I lost three days and I didn't show up for Christmas. I would be so terrified. And I didn't. I was like, how can I trust you? And he's like, well, but that's not me anymore. Anyways. Cut to Harry saying, you know what, all she needs to hear You're saying how it was is. All she needs to hear is how it is now. You need to have that last sentence on the end of your story. And by the way, I didn't show it for Christmas. Wow, I'm so glad I don't do that anymore. Then she won't freak out. But the point is I was really I had a lot of trust issues with him our first year, and so he wrote this story about this girl who doesn't who finds something out about her partner and doesn't think she can trust him. And the point is he's a very good director. I trust his creativity implicitly, so I can have him read things. He coaches me on auditions, and that's a very safe space for me to be in because he can give me some really hard direction or just saying you're doing too much or you're you're trying too hard, and I know he wants what's best for me, so I'm able to get really difficult direction and do a better job in my career because of him. Now, one last question, tell us about the world needs more purple people with Benjamin hartrist And I'm not a writer. I am an orator at best, and barely that. But I did write a children's book this year with one of my best friends, ben Heart. Um. It came from our personal experience of seeing our kids together and seeing it just a very polarizing political culture seep into our kids daily lives of our kids were seeing in us and them and even at our dinner table, we were getting heated when we were talking about things. This is you know, over the last five years, four years, and we wanted to create some language, uh and in a children's book to help. And so, I mean, it's not crazy far off to understand that red plus blue equals purple. But it's just we didn't want our kids looking around and seeing enemies. We wanted them to see constructive conversations even within disagreements. We wanted a social identity that positions them towards their fellow humans. And so we tried to come up with five great pillars that no one could argue with on any side, and being purple means asking really great questions, laughing a lot, using your voice, being a hard worker, but also being totally and uniquely you and attentive to your own experiences. So we really just we didn't want any of this corrosive political divide to seep into our kids. We want it. It's it's it's not about anything other than looking towards your fellow human beings, listening to their experiences and telling them yours. And we like to say, the only way to be purple is to just be you, because you're the only you we've got. And it's not you know, it's not a secret that we wrote it for kids, because if we wrote it for adults, the kids wouldn't read it. But if we wrote it for kids, the adults would have to read it to them. So it's just a polite reminder that there's not en us in them. And we can still disagree, and we can still use our voice, but we got to live together, and it's okay if you disagree with people, and it's okay if someone has a different experience, and you should want to hear as many stories as possible. But we wanted our kids to have a social identity that positions them towards their fellow human beings are good, I think so. I can tell yeah, it's one of the things I'm most confident in. Actor Kristen Bell. She's been working on a new movie with Vince Vaughan called Queen Pins During Quarantine. It's about a pair of housewives who run a multimillion dollar coupon scam. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing. Is brought to you by I Heart Radio. We're produced by Kathleen Russo and Carrie Donohue. Our editor is Zach mcneie and our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our theme song is by Miles Davis.