Aurora Starchild
Dax Shepard interviewed Anna Kendrick on Armchair Expert, and many are considering it to be one of the best-ever episodes of the podcast. The discussion delved deep into issues of insecurities, toxic relationships, and power dynamics. And somewhere in that mix, Shepard told Kendrick that his wife Kristen Bell is jealous of her.
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Kristen Bell Gave Husband Dax Shepard Permission to Tell Anna Kendrick She Was Jealous
“I’ve known Kristen for 15 years. She has only had jealousy over a single human, and it’s been you,” said Dax. “I never saw it. It blew my mind. Kristen was like, ‘who is this other short person? Oh, so she can sing like that too. Oh, I’m already here. We got another one?’”
Dax Shepard wasn’t throwing his wife under the bus in this moment. He added that he asked Kristen if he could tell Anna that and she replied, “Oh my god yes of course.”
“In the whole 15 years, she said nothing but benevolence for everyone,” Dax continued. “And she monitored you, recognized how brilliant you were, lost some roles to you. And slowly processed the whole thing and has nothing but wonderful feelings for you. But you’re the only person that ever made her jealous.”
Dax Elaborated that Kristen Still Admired Anna. “She Never Disliked You.”
“I really feel like I have a comically shocked look on my face,” the Alice Darling actress responded. “That is bizarre. Because I had been debating, depending on how this conversation went, sort of saying, ‘Gosh, I actually have a funny thing with your wife where I never felt like she liked me.’”
Anna Kendrick elaborated on this thought process and how she thought it came from her own insecurities.
“I do think that a massive percentage of that is just genuinely, when it comes to like, really sweet, angelic blonde girls, I just assume they think I’m weird,” she continued. “They think I’m this like, weird little troll. And I don’t think of Kristen as short. I think of her as just this angel. And she’s so sweet. And I feel so rough around the edges that I was like, ‘oh, she must not like me — oh no, I’m sure that’s just my projection.’”
“I have to be ultra-clear with you. She never disliked you,” Dax said. “I just want to say that for the record. Never disliked. Jealous. Which I had never seen… Total admiration for your talent.”
Anna Kendrick Was Discussing How She Was Healing From a Toxic and Abusive Relationship
For context, Dax Shepard, his co-host Monica Padman, and Anna Kendrick were discussing toxic relationships. And more specifically, Kendrick’s journey in healing from one. They had set the tone right from the start by bundling up Kendrick in a blanket like a cocoon or, as she said, a “straight jacket.”
Kendrick had detailed an ex who had become incredibly abusive to her. The mention of Kristen’s feelings towards Anna was to examine human feelings of jealousy versus envy, which the trio was getting into.
Anna Kendrick recalled a time when her ex was standing over her and yelling as she was crying. And he continued yelling as she continued crying. It was a man whom Kendrick saw a future with and had been with for years. On her path to recovery, she started journaling and seeing therapists. She’d battled with conflicting feelings of being at fault or that perhaps she had abused him. At one point, she even wondered if she had a personality disorder.
“I… feel like my obsessive mind is a curse but it is also a great resource. And I have been so obsessed with psychology for the last 2 ½ years,” Kendrick admitted.
Dax Shepard Suggested Kendrick’s Ex Was Envious of Her
Going deeper, Dax mentioned that he thought Anna’s ex may have been envious of her. Specifically, he saw a pattern in a lot of high-profile relationships where men feel emasculated when their female partners are more successful than them. The female breadwinner dynamic, he said, will often lead to a form of toxic envy, and that in itself isn’t sustainable.
“So here is my little soap-boxy thing,” said Dax. “He envied you. And that is f***ing so dangerous in a relationship. He couldn’t have compassion for you because you had everything he wanted. For himself. When he’s looking at you, crying on the ground, a normal human reaction would be, ‘I’m hurting a human being. This is terrible.’ But no. ‘I’m hurting this b**ch who has every f***ing thing I want and doesn’t deserve it, is not using it correctly.”
“You can’t have compassion when you have great envy for somebody,” he continued. “Partners have to be peers. It doesn’t have to be financial. But if you literally have all the things I really want, it’s very dangerous. I don’t know that someone can be so evolved that they can find compassion for the person they’re very envious of.”
Envy Is Different Than Jealousy
“I think that had to be part of it if this makes sense,” Kendrick said. “Because ‘envy,’ and I’m so glad you used that word, because I do think that there’s something in envy specifically that doesn’t just feel like ‘you have what I want.’ It feels like, ‘you have what I want and that is the thing that is preventing me from having what I want.’ And I think that it made him more comfortable to have a narrative that I was holding him back.”
“I can admit to this, and when I interviewed her, I admitted to it. But when I dated Kate Hudson, I felt very ‘less than,’” said Dax. “I was like in the worst stretch of three bombed movies in a row. It was clear to me that I would not be the lead in any movies. And then in the near future she was at the top of her earning potential, and I found myself having way too many opinions about what she should or shouldn’t be doing.”
“I didn’t vocalize them, but I thought, ‘wow, you have this crazy opportunity I’d kill for.’ I would have that position of, ‘you’re kind of mismanaging this. And by the way, if it fails, I’m going to actually feel vindicated that I was right.’ And that’s because I was feeling very ‘less than’ around the whole thing. I would never have that opinion of her now, but I felt that way at times. And I wish I hadn’t, but I did.”
Was This One of the Most Transformative Armchair Expert Podcast Episodes Ever?
Anna Kendrick took the moment to circle back to Kristen Bell at that point.
“If we’re calling out weird, confusing, ugly human emotions. I’m going now that I’ve had a couple minutes to settle with that thing about Kristen. First of all, that’s so unbelievable to me. And now I’m going like, ‘that makes me feel nice.’ Because obviously she’s unbelievably talented and successful at all the things.”
It’s fascinating to hear about one of the most successful actresses in the world being jealous of another successful actress. Both Kristen Bell and Anna Kendrick are multi-award nominated and winning performers. Both have gorgeous voices, with Bell known for her Frozen voice work and Kendrick is known for Trolls as well as films like Pitch Perfect.
But what made this conversation so unique was the way these three processed such uncomfortable feelings through honest, brave reflection. It was a completely unscripted podcast but it’s almost like a genius wrote it.
Somehow the anecdotal story about Dax’s wife being jealous of Kendrick helped them get into the nitty gritty of envy in toxic relationships. It wasn’t to compare Kristen Bell’s feelings but to contrast them. All people deal with insecurities. But it’s how we process them that matters.
