Brad Pitt and Dax Shepard have shared what it was like getting to know each other in an unorthodox setting — Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
Pitt, 61, spoke to Shepard, 50, and co-host Monica Padman on their “Armchair Expert” podcast on June 23, 2025, about attending an all-male recovery group that also included Shepard.
“What an amazing thing this experience was for me,” Pitt said. “It was a men’s group, it was AA, it was when I first was getting sober. It was incredible 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.”
He also credited Shepard, who had already been a regular part of the group when Pitt joined, for his contributions to the meetings.
“Dax was usually near the end,” Pitt said. “He’s kind of like an elder statesman. I really respected it. Was really open and honest, was a way to kind of take whatever the kind of theme seemed to go in the evening and put it in the funniest kind of packages, and it meant a lot to me. It really did.”
“Haven’t talked to him since,” Pitt then joked.
Shepard wondered if Pitt felt uncomfortable describing their time at this meeting.
“Given the context in which we met, which is really heightened honesty and vulnerability, does it make you nervous to have to talk with me in public?” Shepard asked him.
“No, not at all,” Pitt said. “Quite at ease.”
At the time, Shepard worried about how Pitt would feel opening up to a group given his A-list status.
“How is he ever going to open up and be honest in this space?” Shepard recalled thinking.
But he says the “F1” star quickly fit in despite his fame.
“And then it dissipates a bit, people get a little more comfortable and then you were so f——- honest,” Shepard said to Pitt. “And I was like he must have a stubbornness, like I have, which is like ‘Yeah all this is going on, but I refuse to let it not let me be a person.'”
Pitt recalled the moment when group members were going in a circle and sharing the struggles and wins in their daily lives.
He admitted to feeling nervous as his turn approached. “But everyone was so open. It gives you permission in a way to go, ‘I’m going to step out on this edge and see what happens.’ I just really grew to love it,'” he said.
Shepard joked that the attendance at the meeting “went up a little bit with Pitt there.” He also shared how he approached having Pitt in the group.
“I felt very compassionate to what you go through, and I never sweated you,” Shepard said. “I wasn’t like coming up to you like, ‘Hey man I’m Dax, nice to meet you blah blah blah,’ so I didn’t really interact a ton with you.”
Shepard also gave insight into how Pitt fit in with the group.
“I do want everyone in the world to know you’re insanely gracious,” he said. “You learned everyone’s name, you engaged with people. I also thought you were particularly good at assessing who was kind of low status, and you seemed to really be kind to those people.”
“It was really moving,” Pitt said. “Some of these men were so moving.”
Padman asked Pitt if he was worried about being honest and vulnerable in the meetings out of fear that it might get leaked to the public.
“So I’ve heard of stories where like Philip Seymour Hoffman went to one and someone videoed and put it out,” Pitt said. “But I had been assured by another friend this was a safe place.
“I’m sure I was a bit shy,” he continued. “I can generally be a bit shy in any kind of situation first. I just remember getting my arms around it pretty quickly, and it became a thing for me, something I looked forward to.”
