Kristen Bell also very surprised to learn she's Fox News' new Mary Magdalene

It turns out that the ranks of people asking this question this week include Bell herself, who was apparently shocked to learn that she was the voice of Mary Magdalene in Fox News Media’s “new” The Life Of Jesus. “New” in quotes, because it turns out that this much-touted project is not, in fact, a newly recorded podcast, but something that’s been cobbled together from an earlier audiobook that Bell and others recorded fully 15 years ago, and then forgot about. Per Rolling Stone, Bell was “blindsided” when she learned that her name and voice were being used to promote the project, which she worked on as The Truth And Life Dramatized Audio Bible, originally released back in 2010. The first the actress heard about that audio being transformed into a podcast was earlier this week, when Fox News apparently reached out to see whether she might like to book an appearance on Fox & Friends to celebrate her “new” “gig.”

Bell’s reps note that she didn’t give permission for her work to be repurposed in this way, although it’s not clear whether that’ll have any legal bearing. (Fox Nation’s Fox Faith apparently licensed the book’s audio from one of the audiobook’s original producers.) Rolling Stone also quotes a document indicating that folks at Fox might be aware that they’d get blowback for rolling out a 15-year-old audiobook as “new premium content,” saying that they asked at least one of the celebrity participants to “not mention that this audio New Testament Bible was produced years ago, we’d like it to feel like something that was produced more recently.”

Update, 11/20/25 at 7:50 p.m.: Fox News has now issued a statement in response to this story, with a spokesperson saying, “Gulfstream Studios produced the Life Of Jesus Podcast from The Truth And Life Dramatized Audio Bible, which was licensed by FOX News Audio, with full cooperation and participation by all the actors involved.”

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