Brad Pitt’s first interactions with Dax Shepard were in a very vulnerable setting.
Pitt, 61, candidly recalled meeting Shepard, 50, in an Alcoholics Anonymous men’s group during an appearance on the Parenthood star’s “Armchair Expert” podcast on Monday, June 23.
“Given the context in which we met, which is like really heightened honesty and vulnerability, does it make you nervous to have to talk with me in public?” Shepard asked, to which Pitt replied, “No, not at all. Quite at ease.”
“We can say men’s group, right?” he added.
Brad Pitt Says AA Members ‘Came Down’ on Him for Revealing His Involvement
Shepard responded, “I was going to say AA. You’re not supposed to say it, but I say it.”
Pitt went on to describe his experience with the group.
“It was AA. It was when I was first getting sober. I just thought it was just incredible,” he said. “Men sharing their experiences, their foibles, their missteps, their wants, their aches, and a lot of humor with it. I thought it was a really special experience. Coming from the Ozarks, where we’re like, ‘Everything’s great.’”
The F1 star also shared his first impression of Shepard.
“You go around in a circle, it’s kind of a spiral because it’s a really crowded room. Dax was usually near the end because he’s been there a while. He’s kind of like an elder statesman. And I really respected it,” he said. “It was really open, honest, was a way to take whatever theme seemed to go in the evening and then put it in the funniest package. And it meant a lot to me, it really did.”
Pitt then joked, “Haven’t talked to him since.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Shepard asked Pitt how it felt to get vulnerable in a room full of other famous men.
“You’re at this meeting. We’re going to get into the fact that a bazillion famous people have come to this meeting and everyone’s used to it,” Shepard said. “And then you came in. It was pretty overwhelming. And I got a real sense of what your experience is. In this way that I couldn’t really fathom, you have the power of, when you are in a place, everyone can’t stop thinking about you. And I was like, ‘God, he has to be aware of that.’ What does that feel like? That’s a lot to deal with. How is he ever going to open up and be honest in this space?”
Pitt told Shepard that he had gotten to a point in his sobriety journey where he was “on my knees” and ready to be “really open.”
“I was trying anything and everyone, anything anyone threw at me. It was a difficult time. I needed rebooting,” he continued. “I needed to wake the f*** up in some areas.”
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Pitt added, “But everyone was so open. It gives you permission in a way to go, ‘OK, I’m going to step out on this edge and see what happens.’ And then I really grew to love it.”
Pitt got sober after a September 2016 incident on his family’s private jet led to a child abuse investigation. Angelina Jolie, whom he married in 2014, filed for divorce one week later. Pitt was cleared by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services in November 2016. Pitt and Jolie, 50, finalized their divorce in December 2024.
The Bullet Train actor opened up about AA helping him through his sobriety journey in a 2022 interview with GQ.
“I had a really cool men’s group here that was really private and selective, so it was safe,” he said at the time. “Because I’d seen things of other people who had been recorded while they were spilling their guts and that’s just atrocious to me.”
