In the words of Kristen Bell, "I'm going to get a lot of flack for this. And let me start by saying I don't care."
This is how the actress prefaced a story she was about to tell Carla Hall about her daughters during the host's inaugural episode of her Say Yes! podcast on Wondery Tuesday, Sept. 15. As the Good Place star explained, her youngsters, Delta, 5, and Lincoln, 7, like to drink O'Doul's nonalcoholic beer.
"My husband brought home a six-pack of O'Doul's last night. And my daughters often ask for O'Doul's," the celebrity mom, who's married to Dax Shepard, told Hall. The actress, who reiterated that O'Doul's is nonalcoholic, also noted that their daughters have also ordered the beers at restaurants.
According to the star, it's a nostalgic drink for the kiddos. "The reason for this is because when we first had our child and my husband would put her in the Babybjörn and we'd walk around the neighborhood, he'd pop a nonalcoholic beer in his hand and the baby would paw at it and put the rim in her mouth," she recalled. "It's a sentimental thing for my girls, right? It makes them feel close to their dad."
So, years later, they're enjoying an O'Doul's with their lasagna dinner. "We're like, 'I mean, there's nothing wrong with it. It's just essentially a bubbly juice.' Right? There's nothing in it," she told Hall. "We also talk to them very much about his sobriety and the importance of it and why Daddy can't drink."
As the finale of Bell's tale, she described what she found when she walked in on her daughters during Zoom class that morning.
"They have 15-minute breaks where they're allowed to jump around and grab a snack and wiggle it out. And I walk in to check on them at 9:30 and both of them are drinking an O'Doul's on their Zooms," Bell said. "They're both just sipping their Doulies. And I'm like, 'What must these other parents and teachers think of me?'"
However, as the actress made clear, she's not interested in other people's judgment. "And then I remind myself, 'You don't care, Kristen. They can pretend like you're doing something wrong,'" she defended. "I would argue that I'm not, because it's nonalcoholic."
"If anything," she added, "it opens up the discussion for why Daddy has to drink nonalcoholic beer, because some people lose their privileges with drinking. Drinking's not always safe." Shepard has celebrated more than a decade of sobriety.
As for Bell, she can laugh at herself. "I walked in and both my children were sipping a beer in their 9 a.m. Zoom," she quipped. "5 and 7. There you go. Kristen lets her kids drink nonalcoholic beer."