The Affair Rumor That's Haunted Dax Shepard & Kristen Bell's Marriage For Years

Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell's relationship has been a breeding ground for wild rumors and gossip for years. And while many of them have been debunked, one that refuses to go away is the shocking claim that the "Punk'd" star cheated on his wife with an ex-girlfriend. It all started in December 2018 when Kayti Edwards, granddaughter of the legendary Julie Andrews, dished to the Daily Mail that she and Shepard had "slept together" in 2009, two years into his relationship with Bell. Edwards, who claimed she didn't know they were together at the time, even provided photographic evidence of the two making out in a photobooth, but it's unclear when the pics were actually taken.

Shepard and Edwards briefly dated in 2005, but they split up when she moved to Hawaii. When Edwards returned to Los Angeles in 2009, she ran into the actor at a party, recalling, "I saw him and we hadn't seen each other in a few years. So it was like a very friendly, 'Oh my gosh, I haven't seen you in forever. Nice to see you.'" But the pleasantries quickly turned to flirting and, as Edwards tells it, they subsequently began kissing in the photobooth. But the podcaster apparently got nervous when he spotted that the photobooth had a screen that let everyone standing outside see what was happening inside. 

He snatched the photos as they came out of the machine and gave them to Edwards, telling her, "I can't take these home, you better hang onto them." Despite his apparent concern, the two left the party together afterwards and returned to the house where she was staying.

There are a lot of weird things about Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard's marriage, which has got the celebrity couple into trouble with their fans from time to time and makes it easy for outsiders to believe that the "Parenthood" star may have cheated on his longtime wife. But Bell and Shepard, who got hitched in 2013, have stood side by side through it all, including in their initial response to Kayti Edwards' claims. In a now deleted Instagram post, shared by People, the "Armchair Expert" host denied that he'd been unfaithful and even offered an explanation for the eyebrow-raising photos, clarifying, "Hey Daily Mail, that photo is 13 years old, not 9," which indeed suggests that it came from the time he and Edwards dated, before he met Bell. 

Shepard went on to claim that his ex-girlfriend had a habit of spreading questionable stories about celebrities, making the accusation that she "sold stories to tabloids about Matthew Perry, Jack Osbourne, Kid Rock, and now me." Bell, for her part, seemed to believe her husband's explanation, heading to Instagram and posting a photo of her and Shepard kissing just days after the Daily Mail ran the story. Still, while the celebrity couple are still together, raising their two kids, and creating a scandal that is another red flag in a list of many, the photobooth pics continues to make certain detractors wonder just how stable their relationship is.