Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard have addressed claims that they lied about being “stranded” at an airport in Boston due to extensive flight delays.
On 27 July, Bell documented her family’s whirlwind travel story in a series of Instagram Story posts. The Frozen star revealed that she and her husband, Shepard, were “stranded” at Boston Logan International Airport with their two children - Delta, eight, and Lincoln, nine.
After several flight delays, they relied on a number of activities to pass the time, with the photos showing the family playing Uno on the airport floor. “We made quite a home here,” Bell wrote, alongside a selfie brushing her teeth in the airport.
In another post, the Good Place star showed the family setting up camp at the Boston airport with several blankets laid out across the airport floor. “There were no hotels available within 50 miles,” she wrote over a video of Shepard lying on the floor and watching a show on a tablet with one of the couple’s daughters.
Eventually, Bell shared that her family was “kicked out” of the airport - despite “wanting” to stay the night - and sought shelter in the “friend of a friend’s” attic. Now, the couple has responded to controversy surrounding the airport debacle in a recent episode of Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast.
The Gossip Girl alum joined her husband on the podcast episode, where she explained that their family had just visited Martha’s Vineyard when they arrived at Boston Logan International Airport. Shepard noted that “there’s always a little bit of tension” when the couple travels together because he prefers to leave for the airport about “half an hour” before Bell would like to leave the house.
Once they reached the Boston airport “in plenty of time” after “sitting in a ton of traffic,” the family soon learned that their flight was delayed an hour due to bad weather in Providence, Rhode Island, where their plane was taking off. “It gets delayed an hour, then two hours, three hours, four hours, then five hours,” Shepard recalled.
After the plane arrived at the airport, passengers were allegedly informed that the pilot had heard something on the plane that might indicate a mechanical issue. At this point, Bell noted how the entire airport terminal let out a “collective groan” at the announcement of another delay.
“As a mom, I’m clocking when [my children] last slept, when they last ate,” the Veronica Mars star explained. “There’s only so long I can give them peanuts and goldfish.”
By the time it reached 10pm, Shepard shared that “everyone started searching for a hotel” to spend the night. “What we quickly find out is that the closest hotel - and this is important because some of the criticism we received suggested that none of the hotels to our liking were available,” he said.
Bell chimed in: “There was not any place to sleep within 50 miles of the airport,” noting that construction and several flight cancellations had made finding a hotel room difficult.
“Everyone knew before us [that their flights were cancelled] because they kept kicking ours,” Shepard added. “So by the time we acknowledge: ‘No, this flight isn’t going out tonight,’ everyone’s already grabbed the hotel rooms.”
The family was informed that their delayed flight would take off at eight in the morning the following day, at which point Shepard said he made the executive decision to sleep on the airport floor. Meanwhile, Bell said that the experience was “kind of exciting” for their two daughters. “We were like: ‘Girls, we’re sleeping at the airport!’ They were like: ‘This is camping! This is so cool!’”
While the family was excited to sleepover at the airport, a flight attendant later informed them that the airport’s TSA was going to “kick [them] out” at 1am. Eventually, Shepard said he texted his friend who was staying at a house nearby if they could crash for the night. While the family ultimately sought shelter in the home’s upstairs attic, the podcast host took the moment to address criticism the couple received for their chaotic airport journey.
“The thing I got worried about when it got on the news is, I would hate for people to think we were upset or complaining about the experience. I just thought it was novel and funny,” Shepard shared. “So, I guess I was confused when I saw these really angry comments on my posts because I can’t figure out what makes someone mad about that story.”
Bell then blamed the controversy on a lack of “emotional and intellectual capacity” and an “outrage addiction” from people on the internet.
“They want to be angry about something. It was like: ‘You’re not being kicked out,’ ‘Of course there were hotels,’ ‘I can’t believe you spent $600 on pillows,’” she said. “People are going to make s****y comments and the more time and energy you give to thinking about it, the more they’re justified to do it.”
