Kat Dennings makes a new friend on Shifting Gears — played by Lilly Singh — thanks to a quality chat about divorce.
In Us Weekly‘s exclusive clip from the Wednesday, October 8, episode of the hit ABC sitcom, Dennings’ Riley spends time with Jen as they bond over their respective marriages coming to an end.
“My ex was the worst. He got really into CrossFit — and then even more into his trainer, Xavier,” Jen says before Riley counters, “I married a bass player.”
While Jen acknowledges that Riley won with the worse ex, she also had some sound advice.
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“But hey, the further you get from the divorce, the easier it gets. Now I just do whatever I want,” she notes. “I started making ice cubes out of wine.”
Jen then suggests a “girls’ night” to Riley, who replies, “Really? Afternoon hang followed by same-night hang? Are we moving too fast? Do I even care?”
When Shifting Gears premiered in January, viewers were introduced to Matt (Tim Allen) and his estranged daughter as they found themselves living together and working to repair their relationship. Season 1 followed Riley and her kids — Carter (Maxwell Simkins) and Georgia (Barrett Margolis) — integrating themselves into Matt’s life while dealing with the fallout from her marriage to ex Jimmy (Lucas Neff).
The season 1 finale marked an end to Riley and Jimmy’s marriage — and opened the door for a possible romance with Gabriel (Seann William Scott).
“Riley is literally hours out of her marriage. She should really pull it back a little bit,” Dennings, 39, joked to Us in March about Riley’s future with Gabriel. “She’s been separated for a long time and she hasn’t been emotionally in this relationship. But still, she just got out of a very long relationship.”
She continued: “She also really loves Gabriel as a friend. So I think there’s lots of reasons for the slow burn.”
While Dennings wasn’t in a rush to see Riley commit to a new romance, she was thrilled to see where her character goes — especially after forming a bond with her onscreen father.
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“It clicked pretty fast. We had lunch after I accepted the role, and I felt immediately like I could trust him for some reason,” she shared in January. “And he opened up really fast to me. So I [was] like, ‘OK, this guy is like letting me in.’”
Dennings said her and Allen’s “instant” connection had only gotten stronger.
“For some reason it worked pretty immediately — maybe because I’ve grown up watching him for so much of my life, but it just worked. It felt very organic,” she recalled. “And as [filming has] progressed, our scenes are so funny, if I do say so myself. The arguments are my favorite scenes to play because I have no fear. There’s no fear for either of us. We just absolutely go for it, and it’s so much fun.”
At the time, Dennings couldn’t help but praise the “magical situation,” adding, “I was having a talk with a friend and I wasn’t sure what to do next. She was like, ‘Well, if you could just describe your dream project, what would it be?’ I was like, ‘I’d love to do a sitcom again.’ I just described this exact scenario. Then the next day, I got the call about this.”
She concluded: “It was shocking. I’m still weirded out about it because I feel like I wished for it and there it was. So that is how it happened. And I grew up watching [Tim’s show] Home Improvement, so I was very excited about the idea of being his daughter. It’s just been so fantastic and I feel very lucky.”
Shifting Gears airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET before streaming the next day on Hulu.
