Kristen Bell gets candid with Larry Mantle about her career

Kristen Bell knows what an audience wants.

Mostly, they want her to be herself, plus a little bit of the character she's playing at that time.

Veronica Mars, Sarah Marshall, Eleanor, Joanne — all of her characters have a degree of thoughtfulness, quirkiness and smarts. Traits that Bell herself exhibits.

It's an equation she says she's been crunching throughout her career. "Emotional math," she calls it.

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Bell sat down with the host of LAist's AirTalk, Larry Mantle, in studio this week to discuss the emotional math she brings to her characters. Plus, the trajectory of her career, taking creative control and staying true to herself throughout.

The following is an abbreviated version of her on-air interview.

Kristen Bell as Joanne in episode 209 of “Nobody Wants This.”

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Erin Simkin

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Netflix

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Mantle:  Share with us a bit about the pleasure you've taken, presumably, in the creative arc of your career.

Bell:  Well, if I'm being brutally honest, I think I've tripped over a lot of these opportunities. I mean, Ted Danson gave me the best piece of advice once when we were working together. He said, "No one knows what they're doing except for a few people. So find the smartest people in the room and hitch your horse to them."

When I started out on Veronica Mars, I certainly stumbled into the brilliance of that show. But it taught me a lot, and I attempted to sponge up everything. That's where I learned how to do comedy. I had not trained in comedy at all.

 I fought that for a while, trying to be everything to everyone. I was like, whoa, what's the next indie movie that's going to go to Sundance? All the things you read about in the trades. My husband said to me once, "Stay in your lane, like ... just do what you're good at. You are a weird, quirky person. Let that come out."

Ted Danson and Kristen Bell in "The Good Place." (Courtesy of NBC)

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Courtesy NBC

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Mantle:  Let's talk about how you find that edge between bringing these aspects of yourself and the character that you're doing. I understand you're playing to strengths here, but what are the ways that you walk that line?

Bell: To me,  acting is emotional math. I'm not necessarily a method actor. I don't bring it home. To me, I feel like I can close my eyes and see how to make a math equation that will bring the audience on a ride.

And part of that is playing something authentic and being real, right? Not robotic. I look at most of acting in numbers. How much sympathy do you need in this scene? How much empathy? How revolting can you be? And it's all percentages in my head. So I start by saying, "It's gotta be 50% me and 50% the qualities of the character I'm playing."

Mantle:  I do wanna ask you, as well, Kristen, about faith being a part of The Good Place. Of course, issues of faith were center in that. And in Nobody Wants This, your character is agnostic and dating a rabbi. So faith is central. Is that just sort of coincidental?

 Bell: It was coincidence that Nobody Wants This happened to have a faith and belief aspect, as well. But you can insert any line of demarcation between two people into these characters.

So he happens to be a rabbi and she's agnostic. But you could insert socioeconomic backgrounds. You could insert any faith. It could be blue and red. And can they make a relationship when they have differing beliefs? It could be anything.

 The common ground is always more acreage than the differences. And people forget that. It's so easy to forget.

I think that's what I love about you and your work so much, Larry. You are able to keep the truth.

Season 2 of Nobody Wants This premieres Oct. 23 on Netflix. Listen to Larry Mantle and Kristen Bell's full conversation here:

You can listen to Kristen Bell's debrief of her conversation with Larry below: