Dax Shepard recalls time his ‘panties’ fell out of his pants mid-interview

Dax Shepard is reminding everyone of the dangers of not sorting your laundry. 

While visiting Jimmy Kimmel Live on Thursday, the actor recalled a recent incident in which he was interviewing roboticist Ken Goldberg for his Armchair Expert podcast when a pair of his used underwear fell out of one of his pant legs to the floor. To make matters worse, Shepard said it was his cohost, Monica Padman, who spotted the uninvited garment first. 

“Mid-interview, I look over and she has a very scared look on her face, and she looks down at the ground to the degree that I’m like, ‘There’s a raccoon at my feet or something. Some dangerous thing is in here,'” Shepard remembered. “I look down: My panties are on the ground. My underpants are sitting on the ground in front of the guest.”

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The actor’s brain short-circuited. “I don’t know what to do at that moment because I’m really trying to understand how my underwear have gotten off of my body and onto the ground,” he told host Jimmy Kimmel. “I’m really worried what Ken thinks happens in this space before he arrived.”

In the end, Shepard decided that honesty was the best policy. “I just go, ‘Oh my God, Ken, I’m so sorry. My panties are on the ground,'” he said. “And then I have to do a lot of math and I realize, oh, the day before I wore these pants at a commercial shoot, and I put my underwear and socks there in the legs somehow, and then they worked their way out in the middle of the [podcast].”

Thankfully, his socks didn’t attempt to make their great escape as well. “I just remembered, ‘Oh, right, I put all the unmentionables in the pants and somehow the panties have made their way out of it,'” Shepard said.

Turning to Kimmel, he then asked, “Have you lost any garments? You’ve been at this for a while.”

The late night host couldn’t recall ever having a wardrobe snafu on his show, but he has experienced a stray sock hiding out from time to time. “Every once in a while I’ll find a mystery sock in my pants, you know, [when] I pulled the pants off,” Kimmel said. “But never my underwear.”

Shepard then jokingly suggested that he give it a whirl. “I saw you have a great lineup coming, and I’m gonna recommend that for Charlize Theron, just let a pair of panties fall out your leg and land here and just see where that takes you,” Shepard said, to which Kimmel responded, “I have a feeling it would take me to Disney HR.”

To his credit, Shepard took the entire situation on that January Armchair Expert episode in stride, even showing off his blue elephant-print boxers to the cameras to properly immerse the audience in the experience.

“For the viewer, I would be so angry if I didn’t get to see these,” he said at the time, lifting up his undies to Padman’s chagrin. “You have to! If you were watching and you were like, ‘Everyone’s seeing these panties and I’m not,’ wouldn’t you throw your computer out the car window?”

Thankfully, Shepard’s guest Goldberg didn’t seem perturbed by the situation. “I love it,” he said. “Full disclosure.”

Watch Shepard discuss his stray-underwear incident in the video above.