Kat Dennings and Tim Allen shared a bonding moment while gearing up for an emotional scene in Shifting Gears.
“We were both dreading it. We were like, ‘Oh God, we have to cry. What is this?’ It’s like, I looked at him and I started crying, he looked at me and he started crying. It was real. In the first episode, we both get emotional and it was real,” Dennings, 38, said on the Thursday, March 13, episode of the “Not Gonna Lie” podcast. “It’s incredible to do with him and the kids. I mean, everybody is really amazing. That just makes the funny parts even funnier and such a relief to do. It’s just been a very good, organic-feeling show to me. Which is new, it’s a new experience for me.”
Shifting Gears centers around Matt (Allen), the widowed owner of a car restoration shop whose estranged daughter (Dennings) moves into his home with her children. Dennings explained that the show deals with “grief and real issues,” which she said can feel “kind of crazy to be raw and emotional in front of an audience.”
“It’s this incredible combination of theater and burlesque, or something like that,” she said. “But as soon as I look into Tim Allen’s little face, I’m in there. I forget about everything else.”
Kat Dennings Felt an ‘Immediate’ Trust With Tim Allen on ‘Shifting Gears’
Dennings praised Allen, 71, for being a “very present actor” who is “really feeling these things.”
“I really haven’t experienced that a huge amount because, like me, people are thinking about their next line or whatever they’re doing,” she explained. “He’s so in the moment and he’s such an amazing actor. He will just be there with you and experience these feelings without having to think.”
Dennings, whose character is a single mother, noted that she’s “never played a mom” in a previous acting gig.
“I didn’t really know what to do career wise,” she admitted. “I’m 38. I’m in this area where I could play mom, but me? I’m 12, how could I play a mother? That’s crazy. Obviously, the math maths. I was excited about the idea of doing something that I’ve never done before and playing this side of my life. I’m a stepmother, I have two step children. I’m a godmother and I have nieces and nephews that are like my own children. So I have this big side of me where there are a lot of children involved in my life so I was really excited to do that. I’ve never gotten to do that before.”
She continued, “This is Tim Allen’s next sitcom. He’s an icon of television, so I was like, I can’t really pass up this opportunity, this would be really fun. And it is.”
Shifting Gears airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC, steaming the next day on Hulu.
