Dax Shepard fires back at ‘abuse’ claims over flirty compliments to others around wife Kristen Bell
Dax Shepard sat down with Monica Padman on Monday for a candid follow-up recording of Armchair Expert to clear the air after he received criticism over how he 'flirts' with his wife Kristen Bell.
The backlash began after an October 2026 appearance by Kristen Bell on Shepard’s podcast, Armchair Expert, alongside her Nobody Wants This co-stars.
During the episode, Bell casually revealed an unconventional 'love language' the couple share, explaining that Dax flirts with her by openly complimenting the physical features of strangers and waitstaff.
Kristen said: "If we go to a dinner or something, there’s a couple things Dax does where he doesn’t have to look up and wink at me, but I know that he’s just being the best boy.
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"We’ll be at dinner and like he’ll say to the waiter or waitress, he’ll go, 'Wow, you have incredible eyelashes, gorgeous eyes. Great, great job.'
"That’s flirting with me because he just made someone else feel good because he's going to have zero interaction with it... It makes me fluttery inside."
Some parts of the internet took this to mean that he is controlling and abusive, a portrait the actor said 'he barely recognizes'.
Shepard said he grew up around men who behaved in a particular way and has devoted his whole life to being the opposite.
He said: "I don't ever yell at my children. I don't swear at them. I don't yell at my wife."
He explained that he normally steers clear of online discourse sparked by things he says on the show, pointing to his January remark about offering to pay for his and Bell's daughter to freeze her eggs once she turns 18.
This time felt different, because the reaction 'hit Kristen's doorstep really hard' and he then learned everything being said about him.
He described the 'level of unjustness' as something that left him feeling down.
On Monday, Shepard suggested the message had been muddled in the retelling. He said the couple were really making two separate points: that he flirts with Bell by tipping generously and also by complimenting strangers.
"If you think I'm complimenting, like, hot young waitresses, you got a problem," he said. "I'm finding the dude that I don't think's had a compliment in a while and tell him I love his shoes."
The goal, he said, is always to make somebody's day, with those compliments counting as flirting with Bell, but the idea 'went through the grinder' and came out as him flirting with people in front of her.
Shepard admitted that moments like these send him 'in my head', and that this time he became defensive.
His response was a very public challenge.
"I will offer, publicly $10 million to any server you can find that I have given my number to or hit on. Like, go find this person you think I'm doing this to, " he said.
He closed the discussion by returning to the image he feels has been pinned on him.
"To have given it my all to be the opposite of what now some group of people is saying I am is hard," he said.
Shepard and Bell met at a birthday dinner in 2007, became engaged in 2010 and married in 2013. They share two children, Lincoln, 13, and Delta, 11.
Topics: Kristen Bell, Celebrity
Thomas Bamford
