When the comedian W. Kamau Bell recorded a live podcast with them in San Francisco, he got the sense that every audience question boiled down to some form of: “Can I move in with you and Kristen Bell and Monica?”

“A big part of the appeal of that show is that it scratches the same itch that a reality show scratches, without going down that tortured alley,” Mr. Bell said. “You’re in the middle of their relationship, and Kristen Bell is kind of like Kanye West on ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians,’ where he’s just outside somewhere.”

Much of the work that Ms. Padman does on the show — the fact-checking, the editing, the scheduling — takes place off-mic. When they first started recording the podcast, she worried about getting enough airtime.

The anxiety, she said, grew out of a desire for approval from their guests, particularly those whose support could matter to her acting career, like Judd Apatow.

But, she said, “I don’t need to prove myself to any of these people. I can just be.”

Observing interviews from this slight remove, Ms. Padman sees herself as a proxy for the listener. She asks the follow-up questions that people may be curious about and makes sure to circle back to threads that get dropped midway through a conversation. She is always editing in her head. And, Mr. Shepard said, she holds him accountable.

“Monica will call me out when I’m being misogynistic or I’m being mildly racist or I’m being elitist or I’m being whatever — she will always call me out,” he said. “And I think she gives me latitude to be a real person who doesn’t do it right.”