Summary
- Kristen Bell has openly fought against paparazzi harassment, advocating for a no-kids policy among news outlets.
- She was involved in an incident where she appeared to slap a reporter on the red carpet even for her movie 'The Boss' in 2016.
- Despite her efforts, paparazzi still invade her family's privacy, leading her to continue to confront photographers to protect her children.
Kristen Bell is one of the few celebrities who has openly fought back against the harassment she, and many celebrities, has faced at the hands of paparazzi. The Frozen actress is known for her roles in Veronica Mars, Gossip Girl and The Good Place, but she's also known for not being afraid to stand up for herself.
Throughout her acting career, Kristen Bell has faced numerous disturbing incidents with paparazzi where they invaded her private space. Bell and her husband, Dax Shepard, have expressed concern about the extremes the paparazzi go to to get photos of celebrities and sometimes their children. The duo pushed the tag #pedorazzi to encourage a no-kids policy among news outlets, and most recently, a video of Kristen Bell slapping a reporter in 2016 has gone viral. But did Kristen Bell really slap a reporter on the red carpet after she was inappropriately grabbed?
Kristen Bell Slaps Reporter On Red Carpet During Movie Premiere
During the red carpet premiere of Kristen Bell’s 2016 film, The Boss, she had an uncomfortable experience with a news outlet reporter. While being interviewed by Kevin Donnelly from The Fix, the reporter began misbehaving towards Bell. Donnelly, who was slurring his words, said while bopping his mic on Kristen’s face. “You're in this. You’re the boss. Who's the boss in this?”
Kristen Bell tried to respond before her assistant told her to move on to the next interviewer, which didn’t sit well with him. Kevin grabbed Kristen’s arm and called her baby. Kristen Bell slapped him, and he proceeded to fall. That was not the end because he climbed over the barricade and fell again while saying, “Kristen, it’s really okay.” The comments on the YouTube video agreed with Bell standing up for herself.
One viewer wrote, “He was drunk and called her baby. Obviously, he earned the slap. While another joked, “This makes Will Smith seem like a baby slap.” While the moment appeared real, it was actually part of a Comedy Central’s Junketeers episode making fun of reporters' experiences with celebrities. In the clip, reporter and actor Kevin Donnelly pretends to be drunk while on the red-carpet premiere of The Boss.
The segment ends with Kevin discovering he was fired while drinking on the carpet floor before rolling around and crying. Given Kristen Bell's uncomfortable experiences with paparazzi and the media, it's understandable why many believed she slapped a real reporter who crossed the line, rather than participated in a comedy skit.
Kristen Bell Has Confronted Paparazzi Over Stalking Culture
While the Kristen Bell red carpet slapping incident turned out to be a planned skit, paparazzi have harassed Kristen Bell on multiple occasions throughout her career. In 2013, the actress was followed by several people trying to take photos of her as she made her way through the LAX airport. As a new mother to her first child, Lincoln Bell Shepard, she was visibly disturbed by the photographers. While the men surrounded her and pushed the cameras into her face, she pushed her bag at one of them.
Things got so bad that Bell had to hide in the bathroom while waiting for her ride. One of the paparazzi asked, "Is this the longest you have waited in a public restroom for your ride?” Kristen Bell later slammed Perez Hilton on Twitter for buying pictures of her getting harassed. “The only reason they continue to harass us is because your site and others buy the pictures.” When she appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show the following year, she used her platform to speak out against paparazzi’s habit of following celebrity kids.
"We started what we're calling the 'no-kids policy', and we just wanted to start a public conversation about the fact that children, under no circumstance, should be followed by strangers. With or without a camera, it just should never be okay. Because they can't understand, like, what's happening."
During the interview, Kristen Bell called out several publications that made it clear they would still buy paparazzi photos of children, including Life & Style, In Touch and OK Magazine. Entertainment Weekly, Glamour, People, US Weekly, Access Hollywood, E Entertainment, ET, The Insider, Extra, GMA, and ABC News were among the publications she mentioned that agreed not to buy photos of children taken without their consent.
Kristen Bell Fights For Her Children's Privacy Against Paparazzi
Despite her successful no-kids policy, paparazzi still follow the Good Place star and her family whenever they’re in public. When picking up her children, Lincoln,7, and Delta, 5, from preschool, Kristen Bell once noticed a paparazzi taking photos of them from his car. In an effort to handle the situation peacefully, Bell first put her kids in her car before driving up the street to block the photographer’s car.
During a TODAY interview, Kristen Bell elaborated on the situation, “Hi, my name is Kristen. Do you realize how much you are putting my kids at risk? I have confidence your mom raised you better.” Bell then explained to him how dangerous it would be if fans could identify her kids' school and asked him to delete them, and he did. “If I had gone up to that car and yelled at him, I guarantee you he would not have deleted those pictures.”
This is also why Kristen Bell keeps her daughters' faces hidden when she posts them on her social media pages. The Forgetting Sarah Marshall actress revealed during a Romper interview that she chose a life in the public eye, but her kids did not do the same. “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.”
