Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!

Dax Shepard And Kristen Bell Play Not My Job

Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell arrive at the Do Something Awards in Los Angeles on Aug. 14, 2011.
Chris Pizzello/AP

This segment was originally broadcast on Aug. 2, 2012.

Real-life Hollywood couple Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard are a.) famous b.) adorable c.) funny d.) the stars of Hit and Run, a new movie they made together, and e.) amazingly, all of the above.

We've invited them to play a game called "First thing you're going to need is an adorable collective nickname." Before there was Brangelina, before there was Bennifer, there was "Dickenliz," the most amazing, tabloid fodder celebrity couple of all time: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Bell and Shepard will answer three questions about a Hollywood pair who knew how to live large.


CARL KASELL: From NPR and WBEZ-Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm Carl Kasell, and here again is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.


Thank you, Carl.


SAGAL: Thank you so much. We are going over some of our favorite recent interviews this week. There's one we wanted to bring back because it's one of the few interviews we've done with a real life couple.

KASELL: And they are tots adorbs.


SAGAL: To translate, they are Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell. And when they came on the show in August of 2012, along with Charlie Pierce, Adam Felber and Paula Pell, they discussed their famous YouTube video about a special birthday present.

KRISTEN BELL: I really have a love of sloths. I always have.

SAGAL: Now wait a minute, sloths?

BELL: Yes.

SAGAL: Of all things?

BELL: Sloths, question mark, exclamation point.

SAGAL: Sloths?

DAX SHEPARD: I just want to interject that, you know, for most guys this might have been a red flag that...


SHEPARD: ...every night they get into bed and their bride-to-be is watching a video of a sloth laying in the road in Costa Rica. This is nightly, a nightly occurrence.

SAGAL: Yeah. How did you get enamored of sloths?

BELL: I don't know. Because they're so vulnerable.


BELL: They're so very vulnerable. And I think - I don't know. They take their time.


SAGAL: So you really like sloths?

BELL: I do.

SAGAL: All right, so then what happens?

SHEPARD: And we're show business types, so we have access to animal wranglers who bring, you know, animals to movie sets. So I get a hold of one of these guys and find out if I can get a sloth brought to the house for the afternoon for her birthday party.


SAGAL: All right, so you get a sloth.

SHEPARD: Well, there's more to it than that. I mean, I have to amend my homeowner's insurance policy. That's not a joke.


SAGAL: Really?

SHEPARD: Yeah. To have this wild animal in proximity to other partygoers required an umbrella, you know, contingency in the policy.


SHEPARD: So we get all the proper insurance. I tell her to go into the room on her birthday. The surprise has arrived. Take the dogs.

And by the time I get into the room to invite her out to the living room, she's put it together that since I asked her to take the dogs in the bedroom, clearly there's another animal in the house. Oh my god, it must be a sloth. And then she's hyperventilating, crying hysterically by the time I come back in the bedroom.


SAGAL: And the world knows this because you videotaped Kristen as she figured this out.

SHEPARD: Well, I had anticipated videotaping her see the sloth in the living room. And I started running the camera when I walked into the bedroom to invite her out into the living room. I didn't expect the show was going to start in the bedroom.


SAGAL: Right.

CHARLIE PIERCE: What kind of sloth was it? Was it the famous three-toed sloth?

BELL: Yeah. No, it was two-toed sloth.

SHEPARD: Which meant we couldn't cuddle it.

BELL: Yeah.

SHEPARD: For the amount that I paid for this thing, I was expecting a little more than cuddling.



SAGAL: So you guys are a real-life Hollywood couple and you went and you made a movie together called "Hit and Run." It's kind of a getaway caper. Dax, you play Charlie Bronson.


SAGAL: Which you're a guy in the witness protection program.

SHEPARD: Yes, sir.

SAGAL: Kristen is the very nice girlfriend. And the challenge is to get her to Los Angeles before the bad guys get you.

SHEPARD: Yes, I am so in love with her, as I am in real life, that I decide to leave the safety of witness protection and take her to LA. And then the second we leave, Bradley Cooper, the bad guy I testified against, he finds out.

Tom Arnold, the US marshal, he starts chasing us. And it is - yes, it is an action comedy. But at the center of all of that is Kristen and I's kind of real life relationship on display for all to see.

SAGAL: Now, Dax, you also wrote and directed the movie.

SHEPARD: Yes, sir.

SAGAL: And so was that weird?

SHEPARD: It was ego orgy.

SAGAL: I can imagine.


SAGAL: But I'm also trying to figure out what is it like trying to direct your own girlfriend as she says lines of affection and love to you that you have written?


SHEPARD: I guess auto erotic comes to mind.

SAGAL: Yeah.


SAGAL: I'm sorry; could we do that again with more genuine worship please?

BELL: Right. I don't believe you.

SAGAL: I don't believe you.

SHEPARD: I just don't feel like you're seeing me on the pedestal I am on.


SAGAL: Well, Kristen and Dax, it's a pleasure to talk to you. But we have, in fact, invited you here to play a game we're calling?

KASELL: First thing you're going to need is an adorable collective nickname.

SAGAL: Before there was Brangelina, before there was Bennifer - remember Bennifer - there was Dickenliz.


SAGAL: Dickenliz. No, that was Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, the first and greatest of celebrity couples of the tabloid era.

PIERCE: Dickenliz.

SAGAL: Dickenliz. And before we go any further, do you guys have a collective nickname?

SHEPARD: We gave ourselves one. Honey, you want to hit them with it?

BELL: Cracked.


SAGAL: Love it. Love it. And I'm sure Us magazine is known as being a Cracked addict. They can't get enough of you.


SAGAL: Well, we're going to ask you about Burton and Taylor, Taylor and Burton, the Hollywood pair that knew how to live large. Get two right, of the three questions, you will win a prize for one of our listeners: Carl's voice on their home voicemail. So, Carl, who are Dax and Kristen playing for?

KASELL: They're playing for Derrick Stacy of St. Louis, Missouri.

SAGAL: OK. You ready to do this?

BELL: Let's do it.

SAGAL: All right, here's your first question. What did Burton once say about the woman he married twice? A: Quote "She'd drive me crazy, of course, but all I had to do was tune out her voice and check out her rack," unquote?


SAGAL: B: "I'd make a joke about being a Liz-aholic, if I weren't a real alcoholic"?


SAGAL: Or C: "she has a double chin and an overdeveloped chest and she's rather short in the leg," unquote.



BELL: This does not sound healthy.


SHEPARD: I'm going with personally, Sweetie, I think A, but I defer to you.

BELL: No, I trust you. Let's go A.

SAGAL: The one about whenever she started to drive him crazy, he'd just tune out and check out her rack?

BELL: Yeah.


SAGAL: I'm afraid it was C. She had a double chin and overdeveloped chest. Burton said, quote, "This most beautiful woman in the world stuff is absolute nonsense." He said of her.


PAULA PELL: What a peach.

SAGAL: He was adorable guy. All right, you have two more chances. The Burtons met when they were both married to other people. They had a tumultuous affair in the public eye. They got divorced. They married each other. They divorced each other and then they got married again.

They decided their second marriage should be more restrained then their first. Where did they do it? A: in a rural village in Botswana? B: Times Square, high noon, Saturday? Or C: in their guest bathroom?

BELL: Oh no. C.

SAGAL: You're going to go for C, in their guest bathroom?

BELL: Yeah.

SAGAL: They were like, oh, let's just...

SHEPARD: I'd love to get married in a guest bathroom.

SAGAL: Really?

SHEPARD: Oh yeah.

SAGAL: Would that be appealing?

SHEPARD: Well, look, if you get winded, you take a seat on the commode.


SHEPARD: You get hot; you can pop in the shower.

BELL: I already know we've gotten it wrong because we're talking so much without telling us the answer. So I'm going to change my answer to B.



SAGAL: Times Square, high noon, Saturday?

BELL: Yeah.

SAGAL: Because they wanted to avoid attention.

BELL: Yes.

SHEPARD: Yeah. Right.


SHEPARD: Sounds great, honey.

FELBER: We're taking more time.

SAGAL: The moment...

BELL: This just in. I like A the best.



SAGAL: She does have some detective skills. You're going to go for A?

BELL: Yeah, I'm going to go for A.

SAGAL: Yeah, it is A, it was a royal village in Botswana.




SAGAL: They were on safari in Botswana. They decided what the hey, let's get married again, and they found a magistrate in a local mud hut village to officiate.

All right, this is the last question. If you get this right, you win. Liz and Dick were known for their luxurious lifestyle. They had mansions and he gave her enormous diamonds, as is well known. In fact, once, they did what? A: had pastrami from New York airlifted to them in Rangoon? B: rented an entire yacht just for their dogs? Or C: bought a limousine made of platinum?

SHEPARD: It's actually - I happen to know this one because I was reading about celebrities who have had food flown in for them.

BELL: I was just going to say A.


BELL: We agree.

SHEPARD: Mighty good job.

SAGAL: You're going to agree on this?

BELL: Yes.

SAGAL: I like that. I like that how you stand with each other.

SHEPARD: And you're wrong.

SAGAL: Even when you're wrong.


BELL: Oh no.

SAGAL: Yeah, we just made that up, sadly. No, the real answer was that they rented a yacht for their dogs.

BELL: That's absurd.

SAGAL: It's not. What happened was - and you guys are animal lovers.


PIERCE: Said the woman with a sloth at her birthday party.


BELL: Yeah, but I didn't buy him a Rolls Royce.

SAGAL: That's true. What happened was is they went to London, and there's a quarantine for pets. They couldn't bring the pets into London. So for $20,000, Liz Taylor rented a yacht which she moored there right on the river, the Thames, for her dogs to wait out the quarantine.


SHEPARD: Well then that's totally understandable, now that you...


SAGAL: Carl, how did Dax and Kristen do on our quiz?

KASELL: Peter, they needed at least two correct answers to win for Derrick Stacy. They had just one correct answer.

BELL: Can we get extra points for being a good team?


SAGAL: Carl, do they get extra points for being a good team?




SAGAL: Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell are in love and they star in the new movie "Hit and Run." Dax and Kristen, thank you so much for joining us.


BELL: Thank you for having us.


SAGAL: Great to talk to you.

BELL: Thanks.

SHEPARD: Thank you.

SAGAL: Bye-bye now.







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