Kristen Bell sits down Romper for a wide-ranging talk that covers her mothering style and her desire to do the right thing.
Bell, who shares Lincoln, 7, and Delta, 5, with Dax Shepard, often shares videos and pics of their family life, but shields their faces with stickers and the like.
ON PARENTING
Bell says: “My feeling is that I chose a career in the public eye. I chose to be quoted, I chose to have my picture taken. I don't know them yet. I don't know if they will want that. So I really don't have the right to choose for them.”
The pandemic has shifted some of her rules though: “The forced creativity has been one of my favorite things. So we’re saving toilet paper rolls and we’re putting googly eyes on them and we’re putting them in daddy’s underwear drawer. We’ve loosened all the TV parameters. They can turn it on whenever they want. After school, obviously.”
ON ROLES
Bell has her favorite roles, she reveals: “I love every role I do. The story The Good Place seemed to have impacted people and made them think about life, and it is for that reason that they will be my favorite roles forever.”
Her Veronica Mars role still impacts her: “I watched the way Veronica Mars handled problems and it gave me some strength’ — that’s more meaningful to me than almost anything. I put that right up there with having kids. When I’m on my deathbed, that’s one of the things I’ll be thinking about. There’s no way to describe how important that will be to me for the rest of my life.”
ON CHOICES
She also discusses her decision to step down from Apple TV‘s Central Park, in which she played a biracial character. (She was replaced by Emmy Raver-Lampman).
“I grew up in Detroit. I didn't consider myself an ounce of a racist. And when I read How to Be an Antiracist, White Fragility—required reading of a citizen of Earth in 2020—I realized, ‘Well, I've been a part of these systems.' I was unaware of this whole pot of s–t that's been stirring,” she tells Romper. “I have a lot to learn. And I have a lot of action steps to take, to fulfill what I think my beliefs are.”
“The people who say I could play that role aren't wrong,” she later adds. “But I wanted to step down for two reasons. One, if there was one girl who could have a job who wouldn't otherwise have a job, because there are not a lot of Black or mixed-race characters on cartoons—if one girl could have that job, I would want her to have it. Two, if any little girl who is mixed-race or Black looks up who plays that role, I want them to see someone who looks like them.”