Kristen Bell kicked off the 2026 Actor Awards by using her monologue to poke fun at the SAG name rebrand.
Bell 45, opened the Sunday, March 1, awards show at the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall in Los Angeles by referring to the SAGs to Actor Awards name change as a “facelift.” She then broke into song about how actors can rebrand themselves by changing their names.
Elsewhere in her monologue, Bell focused on keeping “things fun,” with no cap on the length of acceptance speeches and giving permission for actors to curse on stage, saying, “I think the world can use some levity right now. In this business, we have a phrase, it’s called going back to the well. And it means when something works once, you keep doing it over and over again.”
She continued: “I would like to rebrand going back to the well as leaning into your strengths. As you know, this year the show got a little bit of a facelift — like many people in this room can understand. We nipped the SAG. Now it’s just the Actor Awards.”
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This year marks Bell’s third time hosting the Actor Awards, which were previously called the Screen Actors Guild (or SAG) Awards. She first helmed the ceremony in 2018 before returning in 2025 for her second run.
“I’ve enjoyed hosting the show every time, so it was an easy decision to come back for a third,” Bell said in a January statement. “What I’m most excited for is the fact that I’ll be doing what every actor does best … sing.”
Jon Brockett, showrunner and executive producer of the Actor Awards, also expressed his confidence in Bell at the time.
“Kristen Bell knows this show, she knows this community and she knows how to keep everyone entertained and laughing without ever losing the heart of the night,” Brockett said in a statement. “Having Kristen return to host feels like welcoming back a member of the family. One you actually want to hang out with.”
In her 2025 monologue, Bell nodded to her role as Anna in the 2013 Disney animated film Frozen.
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“This is a night to honor the actor’s journey which is long, and it can be arduous, and it leads you to the question,” she said. “Do you want to be an actor?”
Bell then sang a revised version of one of the movie’s most beloved songs, “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” Amid her performance, she honored multiple actors’ first jobs, including Jason Segel’s role as the Watermelon Guy in the 1998 film Can’t Hardly Wait and Jodie Foster’s appearance in a Coppertone ad.
“Do you want to be an actor? You are clearly not alone,” she sang. “Are you ready for your breakout as unnamed man or patient in ICU? Do you want to be an actor?”
Ahead of the 2026 ceremony, Bell revealed her approach to hosting, including how she decided on the amount of singing she would do.
“I’d always like to sing, but I can’t have it just be a concert,” she told Variety in an interview published on Monday, February 23. “They didn’t buy tickets for the Kristen Bell concert, right? They bought tickets to the Actor Awards. I mean, I don’t even think anybody paid for their tickets, but they’re coming to see this special experience that’s got 30 years of legacy. I can’t just do whatever I want. It’s not the mirror in my bedroom where I can just perform. But if we can find a topic and concept and funny enough version of that that involves singing, I’m here for it.”
