Emmy-winning actor Sterling K. Brown told podcaster Dax Shepard that while he “respects” how he and his wife, Kristen Bell, keep their kids’ faces off social media, he has his reasons for taking a different approach with his own kids.
Brown, who shares two sons with his wife, Ryan Michelle Bathe—Andrew, 14, and Amaré, 10—appeared on Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast on Monday. “The way that you guys have your children and share your family on social media, I have the utmost most of respect for,” he said. But, he added, “Your children are obviously white. My children are Black. I feel like the more I put them on social, the safer they are.”
The Paradise star explained, “Any proximity that Black boys can have to some sort of celebrity or access or whatnot, I’m like, I’m trying to make sure that they make it home. That’s really it.”
Replied Shepard, “That makes a ton of sense.” He and Bell share daughters Lincoln, 12, and Delta, 11. Bell wrote on Instagram in 2019, “If we expose our kids’ faces, there is a real threat of them getting stalked, or of a stranger coming up to them and knowing their name. It’s a safety thing.”
Shepard said on Monday, “My thing is number one is safety. I don’t want you to know what my daughters look like… I don’t want them to be famous. I want them to be anonymous, and make mistakes, and not be in tabloids ‘cause they were at a nightclub and everyone knows them. I want them to be able to f--- up and be completely anonymous.”
Brown also clarified, “If I am out with Ryan and the boys, we have a policy of no pictures. And the policy is because they deserve to have a regular night out. It’s their time. And because Ry and I have a certain amount of, you know, spotlight or whatnot, doesn’t mean that they should receive less of us. So, if we go to an event where you specifically know you’re taking pictures and everything, that’s a whole other thing.”
Shepard concluded that the difference in thinking about social media “is heartbreaking, actually.”
