Dax Shepard confessed he gave Kate Hudson “111%” of his charm at a poker game while she was still married to Chris Robinson — then tried again years later, and it worked.
Some love stories start with a meet-cute. Dax Shepard‘s almost-love story with Kate Hudson started with a poker game, a marriage — hers — and absolutely no shame about either fact.
Shepard revealed on Tuesday’s episode of his “Armchair Expert” podcast that he hit on Hudson back when she was still married to Black Crowes frontman Chris Robinson, per Page Six. He told his guests, Sara and Erin Foster, that he saw Hudson at a poker game at her brother Oliver Hudson’s house and was not deterred by her being with Robinson at the time.
“I gave her 111% of any charm I have,” he said, per Page Six. “I just thought she was so f–king beautiful and I love [her movie] ‘Almost Famous’ and, oh my God, I can’t believe she’s here.”
By his own telling, the full-charm offensive changed nothing that night — and he knew it walking out the door. “I remember leaving going like, ‘Well, this is as good a job as one can do,'” he recalled. “She’s married, who cares, but that was a great first showing. I just had a crush on her.”
The sequel, however, is the part that sounds like a rom-com treatment. After Hudson, 47, and Robinson, 59, separated in 2006, Shepard said he tried again at a mutual friend’s dinner party in Malibu — and this time it worked. “From that night on we were just together every single day,” he shared, per Page Six. The two briefly dated in 2007 for a couple of months, and Sara Foster noted they “got serious fast” — a summary Shepard cheerfully confirmed in considerably blunter terms.
Context is what keeps the confession charming instead of messy. Hudson was married to Robinson from 2000 to 2007, and they share a son, Ryder, 22, per Page Six. She also shares son Bingham, 15, with Muse frontman Matt Bellamy, and has been engaged to musician Danny Fujikawa since September 2021; they share daughter Rani Rose, 8. Shepard, 51, has been married to Kristen Bell since October 2013, and they are parents to daughters Lincoln, 13, and Delta, 11, per Page Six.
There is even a coda that explains how a story like this gets told on a podcast without anyone’s spouse filing a complaint. Bell appeared on Monday’s episode of “Armchair Expert” and shared her own read on her husband’s flirting style: Shepard, she said, flirts with her by complimenting other people’s looks — telling a waiter, for instance, “Wow, you have incredible eyelashes, gorgeous eyes.” “But that’s flirting with me,” Bell insisted, “because he just made someone else feel good,” per Page Six.
Most celebrity ex stories get told to bury somebody. This one got told like a scouting report that eventually paid off — wrong decade, right dinner party — and it lands because everyone in it has long since landed somewhere happy.
The 247 Take — Timing really is the whole game: the same 111% charm that bounced off a married Kate Hudson in a poker room worked instantly in Malibu once the timing changed — Shepard did not get better at flirting, he just finally got his turn at bat.
Sources: Page Six
