Kristen Bell Joins the Vegan ‘Hot Ones’ Club

Kristin Bell in an orange jumper against a blue background

Actor Kristin Bell has joined a very exclusive club. She joins the likes of Weird Al, “Broad City” stars Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, Alexa Chung, and Billie Eilish in the vegan “Hot Ones” club.

Bell recently appeared on the popular YouTube series “Hot Ones,” produced by First We Feast. Hosted by Sean Evans, on “Hot Ones,” celebrities answer questions about their lives and careers while eating spicy wings, which get hotter and hotter as the show goes on.

During her interview, Bell was on a mission to outperform her husband, actor and writer Dax Shephard. According to Evans, back in 2017, Shephard “performed one of the most impressive runs ever seen on ‘Hot Ones.'”

Bell made it to the end of her interview relatively unaffected by the hot sauce. “We eat a lot of hot sauce at home,” she explained. “We like hot stuff … you could say ‘we’re good at it’ ‘we’re athletes,’ or ‘we’ve killed our tastebuds.'”

Bell — like several other guests before her — opted for vegan wings to be slathered in the spicy sauce. She told Evans she was “impressed” that he offered her a meat-free option.

He replied, “I’m very on the, you know, if you can do two days a week vegan or whatever, you know. It’s not good for the environment, you have all these farms or whatever, you eat so much terrible stuff. So I think that, you know, it’s good not to have the wing thing all the time.” Bell responded, “it’s nice. You’re nice.”

Bell on Being Ethical


Bell — who follows a vegetarian diet — tries to be as ethical as possible. She plays Eleanor Shellstrop in Netflix show “The Good Place,” where her character learns all about morality and how to make the most ethical decisions. In her real life, Bell practices moral particularism, she explained to Evans.

Moral particularism is where situations are evaluated on a case by case basis, instead of just applying one blanket rule, like utilitarianism (the greatest good for the greatest number) or Kantianism (the idea that the morality of actions does not depend on the consequence, but whether they fulfill the person’s duty at the time).

Bell looks at diet with an ethical view. She has been a vegetarian since the age of 11 and continues to avoid meat and eat plant-based foods. Together with her husband, she owns a vegan and cruelty-free baby care line at Walmart named Hello Bello.

The “Frozen” star is also an animal activist. She narrated a 2018 documentary called “Pandas,” which aimed to raise awareness of the plight of the formerly endangered wild giant panda.

While she loves many animals, Bell’s favorite is the sloth. Evans even credits her with bringing about a “sloth revolution.”

“They speak to me because they really are just a junk drawer of an animal,” she told the host. “They are like a pig meets a monkey, but with the reflexes of your grandmother. And how are any of those things bad?” She added, “they just remind me to slow down. That’s why I love them.”