Dax Shepard had to explain to his daughter what Sabrina Carpenter really means in her hit song “Juno.”
During the Monday, March 17, episode of his “Armchair Expert” podcast, Shepard, 50, shared that he had been listening to Carpenter’s music with 10-year-old daughter Delta in the car “every morning.” (Along with Delta, Shepard shares daughter Lincoln, 11, with wife Kristen Bell.)
While Shepard likes Carpenter’s single “Espresso,” including her famous lyric, “I’m working late, ‘cause I’m a singer,” Delta has a preference for the song “Juno.”
“I don’t want to tell her it wasn’t my favorite ‘cause it’s her favorite, but I am not going to lie to her, so here we are. So, we’re working through it,” Shepard explained.
Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard have historically been very vocal about their ups and downs as a couple — and that openness extends to their parenting skills. Bell and Shepard welcomed daughter Lincoln in March 2013, seven months before they tied the knot at Beverly Hills courthouse. The couple went on to welcome daughter Delta […]
“She goes, ‘But do you know what Juno is?’ and I go, ‘No…’ and she’s like, ‘Well, it’s a movie,’ and I go, ‘The movie Juno? Yes, I know.’ And she goes, ‘Yeah, it’s a story about a girl who gets pregnant,’” he continued. “I go, ‘That’s a little nasty.’ And she goes, ‘What’s nasty about wanting to have a baby with somebody?’”
Shepard said he clarified to his daughter that the titular character in the 2007 film Juno (played by Elliot Page) is “a teenager” who was still “in high school” when she got pregnant. Apparently, this information surprised Delta.
Elliot Page in ‘Juno.’ Fox Searchlight Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
“And she goes, ‘Oh, she’s in high school?’ She knew part of the Juno story, she just didn’t know she was in high school,” Shepard said. “And the way she phrased it was like, ‘Wait, what’s nasty about wanting to have a baby with someone you love?’ And I was like, ‘Oh no, there’s nothing nasty about that, I’m just saying, ‘I wanna get pregnant in high school’ is kind of a nasty, fun lyric. It’s a positive ‘nasty,’ I’m saying.”
Songwriter Amy Allen, who has collaborated with Carpenter on her albums Short n’ Sweet (2024) and Emails I Can’t Send (2022), confirmed exclusively to Us Weekly last year that “Juno” was, in fact, inspired by the teen-pregnancy movie of the same name. She also confirmed that the idea was “fully Sabrina.”
“I’m so grateful to have her as a collaborator for moments like that, because I think being a pop songwriter, like, five years ago, if somebody had come in with that concept, that would’ve been like, ‘I’m not sure people will get that,’” Allen told Us in December 2024.
“But because she’s so authentic and her artistry is so intact and she knows who she is, the second she started talking about her idea for that, I was like, ‘Oh, we’re doing this, it’s gonna be great and it’s gonna be witty and it’s gonna be heartfelt,’” she continued. “She’s such a fearless leader with ideas like that.”
