Kristen Bell’s Domestic Violence ‘Joke’ Was So Bad That Dateline Weighed In – Dropping A Savage ‘Screenshotted’ Under Her Tone-Deaf Anniversary Post
By Erin Whitten
Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard have never exactly been models of picture perfect relationships. For years, they’ve built a brand around the kind of oversharing most people keep to themselves and their therapist. They’ve had fights so bad that Shepard “blacked out” and the two didn’t speak for three days. They’ve discussed locking their toddler in her bedroom to teach her to sleep, having their kids drink non-alcoholic beer during Zoom school, and Bell smoking weed in front of her husband despite his sobriety. Shepard once recounted the time he sucked out a clogged milk duct when Bell had mastitis (she TOLD that story on television….) Together, they’ve elevated the concept of “too much information” into a whole aesthetic. It’s always been weird, not endearingly weird, just why-the-f-did-you-say-that weird.
By the time their 12th wedding anniversary arrived, the bar for uncomfortable was already pretty low. Just a few days beforehand, Bell was on the red carpet at Nobody Wants This when a reporter asked her what she was doing for Friday. She looked genuinely confused. “The start of the weekend?” she tried, before she realized: “Oh my god, it’s my anniversary! You know I don’t remember that.” She laughed, said Shepard probably forgot too.
Then came the Instagram post. On October 17, Bell uploaded a photo of the two hugging on their bed and the 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 incentivized to kill you, I never would.’ ❤️
What she no doubt thought was darkly humorous ended up landing like a brick. October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, a time when survivors and advocates are pushing for visibility, funding, and safety for people in violent relationships. Commenters were quick to point out that women are literally killed by their partners every day, and that Bell’s post trivialized something that’s still an epidemic. When you’re reaching an audience of sixteen million followers, the timing and tone matter…and this one missed by a mile. Even Dateline NBC commented on the post with a perfect one-word takedown “Screenshotted.” Before long, the couple limited the comments, but by then, the screenshot had already done its rounds.
None of this was a surprise, though. The couple’s public trajectory has been headed toward this moment for years. They’ve always prided themselves on being brutally honest with each other in public, but that honesty has a way of devolving into performative TMI. Now, with Nobody Wants This season 2 press beginning, everyone’s waiting to see if Bell will address it (assuming PR doesn’t kill the question before it’s asked), but the damage is done. The couple’s brand of oversharing used to be brushed off as “quirky honesty” and this time, it’s not only cringy, it’s careless.
