It would be fair to say Kristen Bell’s upbringing wasn’t conventional. Born to a mother of Polish descent and a father who could boast German, Scottish and Irish ancestry, her parents divorced when she was just two years old.
And yet, while disappointments and struggles have patterned much of the 39-year-old Michigan-born actress’s life, these days a more positive, optimistic and embracing personality you will struggle to find. And this is no better exemplified than in a wild cross-section of dramatic projects that circumnavigate vastly different ideas, subjects and genres.
“For me, it’s about keeping things fresh and lively,” she begins. “that goes for outlook in general.”
Her most significant task at the moment is undoubtedly as a mom to two daughters – Lincoln, and Delta, who were born in 2013 and 2014.
A vegetarian, businesswoman and advocate of the value of “the nerd” – stating that the geeky types found at Comic-Con conventions have actually become the trendsetters of tomorrow – Bell has been married to actor Dax Shepard since 2013.
Having returned with Frozen 2 last year, 2020 sees her fully in TV mode, with “Gossip Girl,” “Do-Re & Mi,” and Apple TV animated musical comedy “Central Park.”
STRIPLV: It’s been a year since you and your husband Dax started up your Hello Bello brand. What has it been like over the course of that year? BELL: The thing that gave us the idea to start it was really the fact that when the two of us were growing up, we were almost always living on a budget. The point that we got to was when we started realizing that we were able to spend far more than a lot of people, and it wasn’t lost on us that we were very fortunate. So, that gave us the incentive to start making things a bit more affordable for other people, as well. We wanted to give those people to have the opportunity to make sure that they’re not choosing between a budget and their baby. We wanted accessibility, affordability and quality. Then, we spoke to some people who knew far more about branding than us and who could make sure that we marketed it the best way that we could, while still making sure that we had our own identity and mark on it. They told us how we could get the prices that we wanted and the economy of scale and all of that. So, we looked at the way that the logo would work, and we used the name of the company to inject some fun into it, by turning it on its side and reading horizontally. Obviously, Hello Bello has my name in it, and there are symbols, funny words and shapes on the products because they’re meant to be fun. I think it’s turned out quite well. STRIPLV: You have a book out called “The World Needs More Purple People.” Tell us what the book is about. BELL: So, my business partner Benjamin Hart and I were talking one day, and he said to me: “You know what? This world just needs more purple people. I’ll let you determine what that means.” So, we went from there and the more we spoke about it, the more we began to agree on a lot of things and that started going into the book. The things that our kids hear and see and then become embroiled in usually come down to being the difference with someone else. Because one person believes in something, the other doesn’t and believes in something else, and even though we all have differences in opinion and such, we’re a human race who mostly has far more in common with each other than we think. We all have the same basic needs to survive, such as water, food, oxygen and stuff. We would all like it if people were nice to us, and people accepted us more for who we are. So, the premise for the book was to get a pillar of rules and instead of kids always hearing us saying how different to each other we are, get them to understand how similar we are. STRIPLV: Can we ask you a few questions about Frozen 2? We love that Anna is so feminine. She wants to fall in love; she wants to get married. Which you typically don’t see in a feminist type character. How important was it for you to show that range?
BELL: Incredibly important number one because I relate very much to that. I am a little bit of a romantic. And I consider myself a feminist. But one thing that I love is my domestic existence. I like doing my own laundry. I like cooking for my family. It doesn’t make me feel not empowered. It makes me feel valued and empowered; it gives me strength. But I know that it’s not the same for everyone. So I think feminism comes from when and where you feel powerful. I love that this movie has these girls that love each other so much, even though they are kind of polar opposites. Elsa is vulnerable and shy and also really powerful. And Anna wears her heart on her sleeve and is very boisterous. What I also love is that in the second one, we kind of represent the men really well Christoff has an amazing storyline. They have written some lines for him that have really hit home for me. There is one point in the movie where he rescues Anna from something turbulent, and it’s the midst of a battle, and he doesn’t say “I’ve got you” and takes over. He looks at her after he rescues her and says, “I’m here. What do you need?” I thought that was such a powerful statement to say to your partner whether you are male or female I’m not going to take over—I’m here what do you need? And then there is another moment in the movie when Anna apologizes to Christoff for something, and he says, “It’s ok, my love is not fragile.” So, it’s just a beautiful example of selfless love. What it looks like not male, not female but human. STRIPLV: Anna is feisty, she is boisterous, she is optimistic, but she also has to deal with some serious stuff in this sequel. There was one scene where it was very emotional, and she starts to sing about getting up and moving on. BELL: Yeah, her dimensions really came out in this one. We put a lot of thought into that. I sat with Jen, our writer, months before she wrote it. And we talked about what we wanted Anna to go through. Like what was important for people to see Anna do? What was the next pivotal moment in her life? Not something silly or frivolous. I said I really wanted Anna to deal with her codependency. We saw her living for everyone else, and that’s beautiful, but what does Anna do when she is by herself? Where is her direction, and her passion and purpose? And what is that? Because I think it a little bit of a front to live for other people when you aren’t focusing at all on yourself. And a mantra that I use with my codependency or my anxiety and my depression is to do the next right thing. And that is where that song came from. Because your brain gets so big and so loud so quickly and you think this one decision like what I am going to have for lunch is going to make or break my next year. And it’s like woah, woah, woah no, it’s just make one decision right now. It’s very much like the steps in A.A. My husband is sober, and I find it so profound to look at that blue book and figure out those steps. Really it’s like it’s just one day right now. This decision right here that’s all it means. It’s just right now. You don’t have to think about it. Don’t worry about tomorrow. STRIPLV: If there was anyone in the cast who had secret magical powers, who would it be and why? BELL: Josh has the power of persuasion. He convinces us to do everything. STRIPLV: What was your childhood like? BELL: I come from a lower-middle-class family in Detroit, and my parents were separated before I was about a year old. Both of my parents remarried, my father, to a Canadian woman who had two daughters, so I have two step-sisters. I lived between the two houses, but my parents were good at living quite close to each other on purpose, although they didn’t really want to. When I look back at my childhood, I never heard my parents say a bad thing about each other, and as an adult, I sort of realize that they still cannot stand each other. But it is interesting that I was never told that I was from a broken home and I never saw anything broken about it. I just saw it from the fact that I had more people to love me. I never remember them interacting with each other, but they also never said a negative word about the other. If I ever went to my dad’s and complain about my mom, he would tell me to watch my mouth because I am talking about my mother, and when I went to my mom’s to complain about my dad, she would say the same thing. STRIPLV: How did you get involved in acting? BELL: Well, because I loved music so much. I was too small to play on sports teams and also not very good. I noticed that I was singing a lot in my childhood, and I began studying solo and ensemble in competitions, which is mainly in Italian. I was then given some musical homework to work on my voice and my breathing. Then, I studied musical theatre and wanted to be in every musical theatre production within a 30-mile radius of my home. When I went to the counselor’s office, and I was 16 and a junior, and they start talking about what you want to do as a career, they suggested that I start with something that I love. I asked them if I was able to study musical theatre and they said I could and that it was a major, so I said: “Thanks very much for having me!” That wasn’t an epiphany; it was just an: “Of course, I will stay on this track.” In retrospect, that was very risky because being a performer is a very hard thing to succeed in. STRIPLV: A big topic at the moment is mental health and depression and you’ve been happy to speak out on that. BELL: Yeah, I think that depression started to creep into my life at around the age of 18. My mom is a nurse, and she is pretty level-headed about things not deserving of shame. She takes an antidepressant, and she said to me right from an early age that she experienced these crazy feelings of anxiety and depression and should I feel any of these things, should I feel out of control, should I feel like a dark cloud is following me, then there is help out there. My mom said that I should never feel any shame about it because everybody’s brains have a system of working just like our bodies, and if the brain is not producing serotonin, then they are the symptoms. So, there is a pill that is required to correct that. I mean, there is no shame in a diabetic taking insulin, and you would never say to someone who has diabetes: “Don’t you be taking that insulin. Just learn to process your sugar better!” No one would say that that’s absurd. So, if your brain needs help, then always be open to the roads that fix it, and one of those roads is possibly medication. I am not saying that everybody needs medication, and indeed, I am one of the people who feel like tons of things are overprescribed. Big Pharma is a very scary world. However, what I am working to do is to be able to combat the shame that people feel when they need to take a pill.