With the long-awaited “Frozen 2” smashing box office records and the recent honor of receiving her very own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, there’s a lot of good things going on in Kristen Bell’s life.
During a Sunday Sitdown chat with Willie Geist, the “Frozen 2” star discussed her career and personal life, including a candid conversation about a typically taboo topic: anxiety, depression and mental health at large.
Tailing off of their conversation about Bell and her 2013 wedding with her husband, Dax Shepard, “The Good Place” star wanted to set the record straight about “relationship goals” and the unseen complexities behind a marriage or longterm partnership.
“We didn’t want people to think that this idea of like ‘relationship goals’ was easy, so we started talking about mistakes we’ve made, and problems we’ve had, and how we go to therapy, and when fight and how often we fight–which is a lot,” she told Willie. “We just started feeling better about ourselves.”
Willie followed up, saying, “The last few years you’ve been very open about anxiety and depression and things you struggle with that so many people in this world suffer with and I think they think there’s some shame in it.”
Bell added in a comment, emphasizing: “Everyone thinks there’s some shame in it.”
“But if they see Kristen Bell, who projects — even sitting right here — she’s happy, she’s smart, she’s bubbly,” Willie finished.
“I’m like ‘bubbles, glitter!’” she joked. “No, it’s not always that way. I am someone who takes a medication for her anxiety and depression. I am someone who has to check myself and sometimes — if I’m feeling really low — make a checklist of good and bad things in my life to see if it’s my mental state or if we really have a problem. And me talking about that actually came from — ugh, I hate to give him credit for everything, it’s so annoying that he’s so right about everything.”
Bell was referring to her husband, the “Bless This Mess” star and partner of over a decade.
“He was like ‘Why don’t you talk about your anxiety and depression?’ and I had never thought about that before. And I immediately felt incredibly irresponsible,” she revealed.
The couple has publicly discussed their mental health on Shepard’s own podcast, “The Armchair Expert,” with Meredith Sinclair from the TODAY Parenting Team, as well as across multiple interviews throughout the years to shine the spotlight on something that rarely gets attention. The two have worked together to try to destigmatize mental health, and emphasize that there is no shame in feeling depression or anxiety.
