Dax Shepard Actually Started the ‘Rumor’ He and Kristen Bell Are Swingers: ‘Nobody Else Talks About’ It

It looks like Dax Shepard is doing some damage control regarding the rumors that he and wife Kristen Bell are swingers.

“Ironically it was them who started the so-called rumor, nobody else actually talks about!” a source exclusively tells In Touch.

In July 2016, Dax, 49, jokingly suggested that he and late night host Conan O’Brien should “swap wives.” When Conan, 61, brought it up during Kristen’s appearance on Conan a few months later, she laughed about the conversation.

“This sounds like my husband,” Kristen, 44, said. “But I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you’re not the first person he’s tried to get us to swing with.”

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The Good Place actress continued, “He just loves people. He loves the human frame and he constantly suggests at different dinner parties that we ‘hang out’ and ‘really get to know each other.’ We’re not actually swinging with anyone.”

Kristen went on to explain that she and Dax were “so in love” with her Veronica Mars costar Ryan Hansen and his wife Amy Russell, but they “haven’t consummated and will never.”

“We’ve decided that our couple will marry their couple. Since we got married, we call each other super spouses, and we are the first-ever four-way couple,” the Frozen star explained.

However, Conan confessed that he did consider Dax’s proposal for a brief moment.

“I would be very interested in this, except for one thing: What Dax was wearing when he proposed this. A grown man cannot wear those OshKosh B’Gosh overalls!” Conan said as he presented Kristen with a picture of the Employee of the Month actor wearing overalls.

The rumors about the couple’s seemingly adventurous sex life would go on to resurface in 2017 and 2018 and then seemingly died down for a bit. But in 2023, the longtime pair clarified the situation again. When Kristen appeared on Dax’s “Armchair Expert” podcast that August, she addressed the allegation that the pair had “hosted orgies or swingers’ parties.”

“I know exactly where [the rumors] came from. It’s because you frequently make key-party jokes,” Kristen told Dax. “We’ll have a dinner party or something, and as we’re sitting down, you’ll say, ‘Everybody leave your keys.’”

Dax admitted that he didn’t just make the joke with his and Kristen’s close friends, but to some of the guests on his podcast as well.

“Some of [the guests], I realize afterwards, ‘Oh, we do not have the same sense of humor,’” the Idiocracy star explained. “I was like, ‘Hey, if you guys are ever in L.A. and you wanna swing.’”

Kristen agreed and confessed that it bothered her that not everyone understood when she and Dax were joking around.

“A lot of people don’t get jokes,” Kristen said about her and Dax’s shared sense of humor. “That’s actually something I have been thinking about lately because it’s such a bummer that everything you say has to be taken so literally that there’s no room for fun in expression or language anymore when you’re telling a story, because you better have the facts right. It’s just such a lame way to communicate.”

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On Monday, September 10, Dax appeared as a guest on The Drew Barrymore Show where he reiterated that he and Kristen weren’t swingers, but laughed about the rumors.

“There was the most exciting tabloid story that we were Hollywood swingers and we hosted swing parties,” Dax told Drew, 49.

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The Without a Paddle actor even said that some of his celebrity friends got in on the joke and texted him about the rumors, including Jimmy Kimmel, who sent him a text that said, “My feelings are quite hurt that Molly [McNearney] and I weren’t invited to the swingers party.”

Dax continued, “Well, there’s a lot of hot couples out there, but no, we have not crossed that divide with anyone.”