Kristen Bell Rewatches Frozen, The Good Place, Forgetting Sarah Marshall & More

This is fun 'cause I'm not allowed

to touch the remote at my own house

'cause I apparently I'm bad at it

and I always get us in a pickle.

But now it's my turn.

[static crackling]

Hi, I am Kristen Bell and I'm going to rewatch

some scenes from throughout my career.

Okay.

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♪ The window is open ♪

♪ So's that door ♪

♪ I didn't know they did that anymore ♪

♪ Who knew we owned 8,000 salad plates ♪

♪ For years I've roamed these empty halls ♪

♪ Why have a ballroom with no balls ♪

How did we get that joke in there?

Come on.

We slid it under the radar.

It almost didn't make it in.

But then we were like, what are you talking about?

That's not what it means. Don't be a perv.

I had always dreamed as many people do

of being involved in a Disney animation film.

They're so formidable in your life when you're young

and I was obsessed with them.

And I remember sitting in my living room

and on my like you know, old boombox,

like recording myself singing The Little Mermaid

just like in case I ever needed that tape.

And I mean like tape, right?

When I finally got the opportunity,

I was thrilled and it occurred to me

that I would do anything they asked me to.

But what I should be valiantly striving for

is to create a character that I really needed to see

when I was 11 years old,

which was someone like this character.

Thankfully, they let me do it.

I said. All the Disney princesses stand like this.

Their hands are always perfect, their posture's perfect.

I want her to be the opposite.

I want her to wake up with drool in her mouth

and I want her to snore and I want her to talk too much

and too fast and wear her heart on her sleeve

and trip over things.

And like the real quirk for a girl who is lovable

but not as put together.

And thankfully this whole experience

was really collaborative,

and some of those things they wrote in

and others they didn't.

And they let me kind of take the reins,

like the waking up sequence.

She was just waking up normally.

And I said, Can I add some snorts? Can you add some drool?

Can I make this very realistic and kind of dorky?

And they were open to all of it.

And I still get such a sense of joy when I see it

'cause I'm very proud.

[Interviewer] And you said in the past

that your daughters didn't like Frozen.

Mm-hm. Now that they're older,

do they appreciate it now?

They certainly appreciate it in the fact

that they can go to college because of it,

but they're not part of the Frozen phenomenon

because kids are meant to make you feel grounded

and they are meant to reject things

that their parents are involved in.

Even if they secretly liked it a lot,

they would never tell me.

♪ For the first time in forever ♪

♪ Oh, I'm such a fool ♪

♪ I can't be free ♪

♪ You don't to be afraid ♪

I love working with Idina. She's so wildly talented.

The funny thing about these movies is

that we don't usually record together.

I'd say maybe 85% of it was recorded separately.

You're not even hearing the other actor

when you're recording,

you're listening to the director read their lines.

So you kind of have to know the other actor really well

and just like make it all up in your head.

But there was one song we recorded together,

which was my favorite part of recording this movie,

which was the scene where Anna visits Elsa

in the ice castle and we got to sing in the booth together.

And there's just an energy there

that's different when you're recording live with someone,

and I just adore her.

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Makes sense for me to go. [people chattering]

No. No, look. You're not-

Holy mother forking shirt balls.

What? I love these guys.

Wow. Is everything okay?

Okay. [laughing]

Like as an adult you kind of expect

to hear some swears

but then there's like things you can put on TV

and things you can't in censorship.

So I thought they had a very unique comedic way

of getting around it.

There were a lot of fun ones.

Bench we had, the fork is obviously the highlight

and the one everyone walks away with.

Come on out.

[dramatic music]

I love these people.

Is everything okay?

William Jackson Harper's on The Morning Show now guys!

Also, did anybody get to New York see his Uncle Vanya?

Whoo.

He was good.

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Right as rain, Mikey, my boy.

So Chidi and I are gonna go to the bad place.

What? Trust me, I've got this.

This show was truly a dream come true unfolding for me.

I had known Mike Schur since I've been 19 years old

when he was like a young SNL comedy writer.

I had admired all of the shows he created.

I knew what a lovely, lovely person he was to be around.

And I got a phone call a year or two before the show started

and he said, Hi Kristen, it's Mike Schur.

I wanna talk to you about a union acting job. [chuckles]

And I was like beside myself.

I was like, Oh my gosh, it's happening.

I'm finally able to work for this dream creator.

I went into his office for a meeting

and it was supposed to be an hour

and I think we talked for maybe two and a half hours

because we realized we were really connecting

on this preoccupation with what it means

to be a good person.

And he said, I really wanna write a show about this

and I want it to have a central character

who's kind of messing up the world around her.

And I want there to be almost video game points.

And I want them to discover they're in the bad place.

And just everything about it was so interesting to me

and I was really grateful and flattered

to finally be included in one of his projects.

And then this cast was so much fun. I love these people.

They're still some of my closest friends in the world.

Yeah, I miss it very, very much.

They're never gonna call a train

to take us to the bad place.

They can't because we are already here.

This is the bad place.

[dramatic music]

[Michael laughing]

Prior to starting the series,

Ted and I were the only people

that knew this twist was coming.

And then there was a really fun moment around episode 10

where Mike and Ted and I sat down with the cast

where he told the cast that he was gonna reveal

we were in the bad place.

Up until that point everyone was just taking the show

at its word that this was the afterlife

and this was the good place.

So it was quite fun to watch these people

I'd become friends with see this reveal.

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Joanne, I listen to your podcast every week.

She loves a fan.

Oh my god, Zara, I knew I liked you.

You have a great name and great taste.

What do you like about it?

You're embarrassing yourself.

Thank you.

Look at this old woman aging like a fine wine.

It was 30 degrees when we shot that scene.

It was shockingly cold in Los Angeles that night.

And I was wearing like this off the shoulder thing

and that's why like they strategically placed

the heat lamps behind us,

and I had I think a big like wooly blanket

over my lap just to try to stay warm.

And everyone at the table was so cold.

So we would be like shivering like this

and they'd call action and then we just kind of loosen up

and pretend like we weren't freezing to death. [laughing]

You just did this episode about what a bad idea it is

to have a three-way with someone hotter than you.

And it basically saved my marriage.

Always be the hot one. [group laughing]

What I liked so much about this character is that

she comes across so confident,

she comes across so self-assured.

And yet what Erin wrote

inside her is like all this vulnerability.

I'm not asking for me. I don't, I don't care.

Okay. Is she Jewish at all?

There's not a Jewish bone in her body,

unless you put one in her.

Shh.

When I was reading the script,

it occurred to me very early on, like page three,

that the person who played Noah

would have to be like sopping wet with charm at all times.

Adam has that mode.

He can't play a character where he's not oozing charm.

I've seen it a thousand times in his work

and I'm such a big fan of his work.

He can also stare like googly-eyed into someone's eyeballs.

And I was like, Oh, if I can do that too

and he can do that, maybe we can make this rom-com work.

But I had also worked with him a few times in the past

and he's just a lovely person to be around.

He has a great energy on set, he's very creative

and he's very like into the work,

but not too much, you know?

Like he wants to block the scene out

and be very strategic and intellectual,

but he's not like trying to be in character

with you when you're at crafty.

He's just a fun person to be around.

And so I put my foot down right away

and I was like, You guys can go through

whatever casting process you want,

but it's gonna be Adam Brody

so talk to me when you're ready.

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I got some really interesting news this morning.

What's up? Crime Scene was canceled.

[upbeat music]

Whoa.

I wanna be honest, I'm really freaked out right now.

Okay, because seemingly the only actresses

that actually can survive

are the ones that show their cooter and excuse me,

but I refuse to do that.

I have a little dignity.

This is such a funny movie. I have not seen this movie.

I don't know that I've ever seen it in its entirety.

Maybe at the screening.

Jason did such a good job writing this movie,

Jason and Nick Stoller, our director.

Wow, it's hard for me to take any credit for this movie

'cause this was so early on,

I did not know what I was doing,

I was just so happy to be chosen.

But I'll tell you, booking this role was wild

because I was working in San Diego on Veronica Mars

and I got the audition, which was a lot of material

and then a whole page about just

you need to know how to improv.

And I was like, Well, I can pretend I know how to improv.

And I got it on a Friday morning.

And on Veronica Mars, we shot Fraturdays,

which means we end around 7:30 in the morning on Saturday.

And I did not sleep that night.

And I tried to learn this material

on set while I was shooting.

And then I drove up to Los Angeles

and auditioned at like one in the afternoon on no sleep

and somehow in that blackout booked this role

and I will be forever grateful.

Oh my goodness. [VCR clicks]

And I don't have the frame to support plastic surgery.

I would tip over.

This voice is very not for me.

And I'm not gonna do that.

I'm not going to exploit myself.

Nope.

I'm glad my voice has come down a little bit

'cause that's a lot.

Actually, the day of this scene, that morning,

I had received an email that Veronica Mars was canceled.

So the irony was so thick

because I think I was just talking in the first person

that I found out that the job

that I had had for three years had been canceled,

and that happened to be the subject matter of the scene

Sarah Marshall was shooting today.

That was wild.

That was a very like meta moment.

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[Veronica] Hey, Upper East Siders, Gossip Girl here

and I have the biggest news ever.

One of my many sources, Melanie 91,

sends us this, spotted at Grand Central, bags in hand.

Veronica Mars had just gotten canceled.

Gossip Girl had just gotten green lit.

And I realized that I was probably five or 10 years too old

to audition for one of these parts.

So I called the head of the CW at the time

and I said, Hey, remember yesterday

when you canceled my show?

Could I be the narrator on this other show?

And thankfully there was enough goodwill there

that she gave me a chance and pitched it to the creators,

Josh and Stephanie, and they said yes.

And then really this was the only project

I've ever done where I never received a note,

ever, throughout however many years it ran.

When I went into the voiceover booth

to start recording the pilot, I said,

I'm just gonna try something.

I'm gonna try to make it really like snarky and sassy

and sexy and we'll see where it goes.

I did it and they were like, Great.

And then I continued to record it for many years

after that without any notes.

They just trusted me. It was very empowering.

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Ever wonder it feels like

to the people you actually taser?

[tense music]

Let's give it a whirl. Whadda say?

I didn't do any taser research. I wouldn't.

That's believable enough.

I realize I cannot pull off bangs under any circumstance,

that there's just too many cowlicks.

A side swoop maybe.

[Veronica shuddering]

Logan move away from him.

Veronica, don't.

He killed my father!

Gimme the gun, Veronica.

[Veronica panting]

He killed everyone on the bus.

I had come to Los Angeles the year prior

and had done mostly dramatic roles

in New York, on and off Broadway,

and so like that was sort of like my training.

But my real life personality was much goofier

and I guess snarkier.

And I think that the writing on this show

informed the rest of my life.

Like, oh wait, there's a lane where I can be self-assured

and snarky, but also show some vulnerability here and there

and engage the audience.

I will forever be grateful to Rob Thomas

for having taught me that that's a lane

I can drive pretty fast in.

Gimme the gun. [soft music]

[Veronica sobbing]

What's interesting is Logan wasn't written

as Veronica's love interest.

It was supposed to be Duncan.

And somehow within the filming of the first couple episodes,

people started commenting on the chemistry

between Logan and Veronica.

Probably because it's that old trope

that's like bad boy and semi good girl

who probably shouldn't.

But there was like a heat and a chemistry to the aggression

that they threw at each other.

This is a testament to the good writing that they were like,

Well, we could continue going in this direction,

or we could take what we have,

which is what we think is this chemistry,

and write towards it

and see what these actors can pull off.

And then, yeah, the rest of the series

became about Logan and Veronica.

[both grunting] [suspenseful music]

This truly feels like another person.

Like I don't have an imprinted memory of doing this scene,

but I can recognize that that's me.

It's very strange.

Also, I haven't seen Veronica Mars in probably 17 years.

Awaiting the day when my kids are old enough

to watch some of the topics

that they explore on Veronica Mars

'cause I do think that it probably holds up, is my guess.

It was a really well written show.

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[soft music]

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I'm Kristen Bell, thank you for watching me

watch some scenes from my career.

God, it's so pleasing to finally touch a remote.

I'm really not allowed to use them at home.