If you want to get Kristen Bell’s attention, might I suggest you transform into a fitness ball or a nutritional supplement, a back stretcher or a muscle roller on social media. “If I see it, I’m getting it,” the 39-year-old says of what could generally be referred to as wellness Instagram. “I can’t tell you how susceptible I am to it—I just want to try everything.”

It’s how she wound up with, to date, Yamuna Balls, resistance bands, gliding discs, foam rollers, KeVita drinks, Moon Juice Dust, powdered camel milk, Sun Potion adaptogens, and something called the Chirp Wheel+. “That algorithm works,” Kristen says, biting into a spinach salad at a café in Los Angeles.

We’ve just come from a grueling Pilates class at Studio Metamorphosis next door, where the star of this month’s Frozen II alternated between singing and grunting through planks, pikes, and lunges, and in one instance, gripped the high bars of the reformer and suspended her frame above the machine in a V shape.

Kristen is a muscular 5’1½”, but until this past year, she had never done one workout consistently. About a year ago, however, she found what she likes to call “Studio Morph,” and for the first time in her life, she fell in love with exercise.

“I’ve always felt mentally strong because I’m adept and can banter and hold my own in a good conversation,” says Kristen. “But I’ve never felt physically strong. I felt waifish…or pregnant. And I’m loving the fact that if we ever get attacked by ninjas, I would be a valuable asset.”

Ideally, she makes it to a class three times a week, usually with a friend. (After she brought writers from The Good Place, one texted her: “Kristen, what hospital do you typically go to after this class?”) It’s a challenging workout that incorporates cardio, circuit training, and CrossFit elements, and its benefits for Kristen are numerous.

“It’s about the muscle in my body. Having children obliterated my abdominal wall,” she says of giving birth to daughters Lincoln, 6, and Delta, 4. “Good night. That’s a wrap. And I thought, Well, it’s never going to come back. What do I need it for? I’m married. Spanx exist. You don’t get everything all the time.” [More at Source]

Kristen walked the 71st Primetime Emmy Awards red carpet last week in a gorgeous rainbow Dior dress. She later presented an award with her House of Lies co-star Don Cheadle. Head to the gallery for some amazing photos from the event.

Say you’re Kristen Bell. Say you’re on a daylong photo shoot, in the middle of capturing the fifth look — a sleek Versace number that’s emerald and gold; your hair perfectly poufed; your makeup flawless. You’re cheerfully giving everything you’ve got, even though it’s been several hours of this already, because that’s what you do. Then, suddenly, someone accidentally knocks over one of the plants near you on set. Do you: a) ignore it and keep posing; b) start screaming at the crew, how dare they, do they even know who you are?; c) squat in your stilettos and start cleaning up the mess as the crew rushes to help you, and then grab a broom and take it upon yourself to tidy up the floor, laughing and making jokes and even dancing around for a second, as people crowd around to snap photos of you being so absolutely Kristen Bell? 

WWKBD? The answer, of course, is C. And here, you might say, is the crux of Bell — a woman whose natural effervescence is such that despite being the cherished hero of a beloved cult television show, it was a video of herself melting down over a sloth on Ellen that really, truly, endeared her to the larger world. Kristen Bell is the hardest working woman in the room, but you wouldn’t even guess she’s not here just to have a good time. And that may be one of her greatest powers. 

She’s a woman of contradictions: Bell breathlessly pivots between froth and seriousness, jokes and sincerity, cleaning up a fallen plant while wearing 3-inch heels. It’s a quality that extends to her on-screen roles. In her existentialist NBC sitcom The Good Place, which is heading into its fourth and final season, Bell’s character is a bad person learning to be good. In Veronica Mars, which returned for a fourth season on Hulu 12 years after it was canceled, she’s a hard-nosed detective on the outside and a marshmallow on the inside. In Frozen 2, the sequel to the 2013 blockbuster Disney hit, out in November, she’s happy-go-lucky Princess Anna, a girl who copes with the pain and alienation of her life with a song. (Yes, she can sing, too.) Her career is full of performances that blend the sad and happy, highs and lows. As a person, she embodies the same. “It is a paradox because I was given this package, this is the bottle of molecules I was given, and it looks to be something that it’s not,” she says. “It’s why it’s funny when I swear. You just don’t think a little girl like this is going to swear at you that much.” [More at Source]

Kristen and her fellow The Good Place cast mates were in attendance during NBC’s day during the Annual Summer TCA Press Tour where they spoke about the upcoming final season of the show. The gallery have been updated with over 200 photos from the event.

Comic Con Day 2 wrapped up with Kristen going all over the place for The Good Place. I’ve updated the gallery with photos from the panel, press line & portrait sessions.

Hey everyone!

Yesterday was a busy day and we expect nothing less from the coverage that’s going to come out of The Good Place media team today! But first, Veronica Mars! It’s been an amazing time yesterday seeing the cast promoting the upcoming season that dropped yesterday as opposed to it’s scheduled release next week!

We’re going to remain spoilers free for another 2 weeks before posting the stills and screencaptures from the new season, till then, enjoy the photo and video coverage from yesterday below.

The EW Broadcast and Team Coco videos are under the cut.

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Veronica and Keith launch their investigation. Their involvement puts Police Chief Langdon on edge. Penn goes public with his theory on who the bomber is. Meanwhile, local teen Matty Ross begins her own search for her father’s killer.

 

Four Hollywood actors had a big idea: Launch a snack bar and use the sales to help feed malnourished kids around the world. They had a big name, This Bar Saves Lives, for their company. And as they sat around their office — which was really just one of their condos — in the early days of the business, they dreamed up their biggest possible goals and wrote them on a chalkboard.

“We brainstormed what success, on the business side, would look like. I’m not talking about growth trajectory or EBITDA here — I’m talking about wild indicators that would mean we’d made it,” says Ryan Devlin, one of the company’s cofounders. They wrote down three things: (1) Bars in the White House; (2) Bars in space; (3) Bars in Starbucks.

They’re still working on the first two. But with a little gumption, the third proved attainable — and would force the company to rethink exactly what it is and who should even lead it.

This is often how it goes with mission-driven businesses. Their founders start with full hearts and eager plans, but not necessarily a full grasp on what it takes to scale their ambitions. Devlin admits it himself, and even sees it as a good thing. “We are a mission with a company, not a company with a mission,” he says. But regardless of whether a socially minded company is run by famous actors or obscure do-gooders, the reality of running a business will eventually take hold. And it would for This Bar Saves Lives, too.

But first: goal #3. Bars in Starbucks.

This Bar Saves Lives’ most famous cofounder is Kristen Bell, and as it turns out, she’s good at digging up email addresses. “You make weird contacts in this business,” she says. She found the email of Starbucks’ then-CEO, Howard Schultz, lurking in her inbox and wrote him: “I have a project you might be interested in, because I know [Starbucks’] values.” Schultz replied. A meeting was set up, and Bell and Devlin hopped on a plane to Seattle…though they weren’t entirely sure what they’d do when they arrived. Neither of them had pitched a product like this before.

But they did have one experience to fall back on. “We’re both actors,” she says. “We just acted like we had this job our whole lives. We’re really good in a room. And some of our charm comes from saying, ‘Feel free to give us advice.’ We went in with an open mind and open ears.”

Does it help having the likes of Kristen Bell on your team? Surely. But still, Starbucks gave the fledgling company the smallest of tests; it put the bars in its stores in two cities to see how they’d perform. Sales were promising. So Starbucks expanded the test, and expanded again until This Bar Saves Lives products were in every Starbucks in America.

“We were making incredible strides, but it was so messy,” Devlin says. “We were just growing. There wasn’t a focused strategy.”

And there it is: The do-good initiative had reached a wall. Now it was time to really build a business. [More at Source]

When we last saw Veronica Mars, the greatest private investigator Southern California has ever birthed and tanned — shut it, Philip Marlowe — she had ducked a corporate law job and returned to Neptune, her beachside hometown, resolved to defend the weak, defy the powerful, wisecrack with the best of them. Happily ever after, on her terms.

But why be happy when you can be hard-boiled? As Veronica’s inventor Rob Thomas said, “Happy and noir don’t go well together.”

“Veronica Mars,” a snappy, sophisticated crime drama about a high school P.I., debuted in 2004 and ran for three critically celebrated but lightly watched seasons, first on UPN and then on CW, returning in 2014 for a fan-funded movie.

That seemed to be the end of it. Its star, Kristen Bell, continued a successful film and TV career. Thomas went on to create and run “iZOMBIE.” But you know the noir trope where a character thinks she has outrun her past and then the past comes on at a sprint? It applies.

In a genre-appropriate twist, the show is back, revamped for the streaming age. An eight-episode fourth season will drop on July 26 at Hulu, where the first three seasons are already available.

Reboots and revivals are as thick on the ground as Neptune beachgoers. A long-gone show that returns after so many years with its original cast, led by Bell’s Veronica, and its distinguishing style (think Dashiell Hammett after a few blender drinks) mostly intact? That’s rarer, and not without its dangers.

Continuing a beloved series after so many years risks tarnishing its legacy. (If we’re being honest, the uneven third season was risk enough.) Besides, how do you make a show about a child prodigy when that child prodigy can apply for a fixed-rate mortgage?

The season’s big mystery, according to Thomas: Is a 30-something Veronica Mars “an interesting enough character on her own to continue to attract fans?”

A few weeks ago, I met Bell on a gloomy June afternoon in her trailer on the Universal lot, an overheated box befrilled in demoralizing beige. She was in the middle of a shoot for her other show, “The Good Place,” and had two caffeinated drinks going, which partly explained the pep. (The messianic zeal she feels for Veronica explained the rest.) In her costume, a lilac sweater over an embroidered blouse and green chinos, she looked about as noir as an Easter basket.

And yet “Veronica Mars,” she said, is the show that launched her, that shaped her, that taught her comedy and responsibility and a commitment to social justice. She will quit it, she said, when everyone in Neptune is dead.

“That’s when I’ll do it,” she said, pushing her cane-sugar soprano into a lower register. “That’s when I will let her go: When the last body is buried.”

“Veronica Mars,” which The Times described, on a list of the 20 best TV dramas since “The Sopranos,” as “a peerless blend of neo-noir mystery and teenage romantic drama,” was always a show ahead of its time. Its heroine, 17 when the show began, looked like a Barbie and scrapped like a G.I. Joe. She was as quick with a comeback as with the Taser she called Mr. Sparky, but still vulnerable to problems personal and systemic.

More politically minded than your average teen soap, “Veronica Mars” had love triangles and cliffhangers and, from its first episode, a sustained interest in wealth inequality. In its depiction of gendered violence, it anticipated much of the #MeToo conversation.

“It continually kept questions about gender inequality in view,” said Susan Berridge, a lecturer in media at the University of Stirling who has written about the series. “There were so many story lines involving sexual violence and other forms of gendered abuse that it became impossible to see these issues as one-off aberrations.” [More at Source]

We finally have some extra details about the upcoming Veronica Mars revival coming to Hulu on July 26. Check out photos and synopsis of the first episode titled Spring Break Forever is the following:

Panic spreads through Neptune when a bomb goes off during spring break. Veronica and Keith are hired by the wealthy family of one victim injured in the bombing to find out who is responsible.