Kristen Bell is getting real about marriage as hers with Dax Shepard makes headlines for all the wrong reasons.
The Good Place star opened up to People magazine about how her “opposites attract” relationship with husband Dax Shepard inspired parts of Season 2 of her and Adan Brody’s hit romcom Nobody Wants This, which became available to stream on Netflix on October 23. The update comes days after Bell faced backlash for a controversial Instagram post celebrating their 12th anniversary.
“My advice to Joanne is just calm down a little bit,” Bell said of her character’s love life. “I feel like she can get very amped up very quickly, and in order to take yourself from a ‘me’ to a ‘we,’ it requires a lot of patience.”
The 45-year-old actress admitted that her 12-year marriage to Shepard, 50, mirrors that dynamic.
“Having someone I feel that is very opposite from me is certainly something that I feel,” she said, adding that it “doesn’t mean we couldn’t make it work, or didn’t want to make it work.”
Bell explained that patience and respect have been key: “We did have to have a lot of patience for each other to figure out what the compromises would be, and a general understanding that we’re probably going to have different viewpoints on almost everything.”
The couple, who share daughters Lincoln, 12, and Delta, 10, married in 2013.
Bell’s anniversary post — which quoted Shepard joking, “I would never kill you… even though I’m heavily incentivized to kill you” — drew widespread criticism, with the National Network to End Domestic Violence calling it inappropriate.
The Gossip Girl alum has yet to publicly respond but has limited comments on the post.
