Kristen Bell Describes a Brutal Reshoot

Kristen Bell said a beach scene for Season 3 of “Nobody Wants This” turned dangerous enough that she called it a “near-death experience” involving herself and roughly 10 crew members.

Speaking on an episode of Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast, Bell described being sent into surf with what she said were 8-foot waves while filming on the beach. According to Bell, she was wearing a scuba suit from the waist down to fake nudity for the scene and had to wade out to chest height, alongside crew members and stunt performers assigned one-to-one for support.

Her account is unusually vivid for the kind of thing glossy television is designed to hide. Bell said the stunt team started screaming as a wave approached, and that two stunt women lifted her out of the water while other crew members were shoved into the sand. She said an A-camera operator was being pummeled by the waves and that both cameras ended up underwater.

Then came the least glamorous sentence in the streaming business: they did not get the shot.

Bell said the director told her they would need to do the scene again. She recalled warning that someone was going to be washed away, then returning for a second take with the goal of spending as little time in the water as possible. The scene, she said, ultimately looked “amazing” on screen, though she added that viewers would notice the show only uses a side angle because the front-facing footage was “horrific to watch.”

There is a particular industry absurdity here: a romantic comedy series selling effortless charm, and underneath it a set full of stunt doubles, submerged cameras and an actor calculating how fast she can survive the ocean and still make the frame. Bell’s story does not establish misconduct on its own, but it does puncture the fantasy that “light” television is lightly made.

“Nobody Wants This,” the Netflix rom-com in which Bell plays Joanne Williams opposite Adam Brody’s Noah Roklov, trades in polished intimacy and easy banter. Bell’s description of this sequence sounds like the opposite: cold water, panic and a second attempt because the first brush with danger was not usable.