- Kristen Bell told Ellen DeGeneres on Monday that she "couldn't prove" to her daughter she wasn't a zombie.
- It was made even more difficult when she got a bad bruise on her face after colliding with a chair.
- "She thought that this was the zombie now," Bell laughed as she recalled the incident.
Kristen Bell explained on Monday's episode of "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" that she recently faced a unique parenting challenge when trying to prove to her youngest daughter, 7-year-old Delta, that she wasn't a zombie.
The "Gossip Girl" narrator said that Delta, shortly before her 7th birthday, asked her mother a dreaded question. "She said, 'How do I know you're my real mom?'" Bell told host Ellen DeGeneres.
Bell, who shares Delta and 8-year-old daughter Lincoln with husband Dax Shepard, said she offered up a very honest answer to the child's "existential" moment. "I was like, 'I don't know any other way to prove it to you other than like, you lived in my body, I can show you the DNA proof,'" she recalled.
But that didn't settle the matter for Delta. According to Bell, Delta followed up with, "How do I know you're not really a zombie and you're gonna peel my mom's face off and prove that you're a zombie?"
"I couldn't prove that that wouldn't happen," Bell admitted. "I was really stumped."
Bell has been open about parenting challenges in the past. In 2018, she told Parents magazine that she and Shepard put the lock on the outside of then 3-year-old Delta's door because otherwise, the toddler wouldn't sleep.
The couple, who married in 2013, also made headlines after Bell admitted that they wait for "the stink" before bathing their daughters. The fact that Bell isn't a zombie is less controversial than that, but she explained to DeGeneres how fate stepped in to make it even harder to prove to Delta that she wasn't one of the undead.
"I went to kiss them goodnight and I went BAM right into this antique hard chair," the "Frozen" actor explained, miming how she smacked her face into the furniture. "I've never experienced that feeling before because it was pitch black and it felt like someone, out of nowhere, just smacked me in the face with a two-by-four."
She implied that the accident resulted in zombie-like injuries on her face. "And then I had this big bruise and my nose was swollen," Bell explained, adding that Delta's reaction was, "I knew it."
"She thought that this was the zombie now," Bell laughed.
Bell's new comedy, "The Woman Across the Street From the Girl in the Window," is available to stream now on Netflix.