Kat Dennings and Tim Allen Were ‘Dreading’ Crying on ‘Shifting Gears’

The tears grew to become all too “real” for Kat Dennings and Tim Allen on Shifting Gears.

While showing on the Not Gonna Lie podcast, the actress, 38, appeared again on filming an emotional second along with her costar on the hit ABC comedy.

“We were both dreading it,” she stated of her and Allen. “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 got emotional and it was real,” she added.

The 2 Broke Girls alum admitted that filming the present is “a really interesting experience because we are dealing with grief and real issues.”

“It feels kind of crazy to be raw and emotional in front of an audience like that,” she defined. “And it’s this incredible combination of theater and burlesque or something like that. But as soon as I look into Tim Allen’s little face, I’m in there.”

“I forget about everything else because … he’s a very present actor, and he’s really feeling these things,” she continued. “I mean, I really haven’t experienced that a huge amount because, like me, people are thinking about their next line or whatever they’re doing.” 

“He’s so in the moment, and he’s such an amazing actor, and he will just be there with you.”

The sitcom facilities round Matt (Allen), a “cussed, widowed proprietor of a basic automotive restoration store,” who’s struggling to regulate to his estranged daughter Riley (Dennings) and her two youngsters transferring again into his residence.

Dennings stated that working with Allen and the youngsters has been “incredible,” including, “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.”

That new expertise additionally contains taking part in a mom for the primary time.

“I didn’t really know what to do career-wise,” she shared on the podcast. “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,” she continued. “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.”

Dennings was additionally excited in regards to the alternative to work with Allen, saying, “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.”

In January, Dennings additionally praised Allen in an interview with PEOPLE.

“Tim Allen, I’ll say, is my favourite TV dad of all time. It’s been an actual pleasure doing this present,” she gushed, noting that the actor’s crew has been with him since his days on Home Improvement, which ran from 1991 to 1999, and Last Man Standing, which lasted from 2011 to 2021. “They adopted him by means of all of his initiatives, which I believe is an actual testomony to him as an individual.”

“We have a really humorous banter. We actually take pleasure in these scenes the place we’re arguing. It’s actually enjoyable,” she added of their on-camera rapport.

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Shifting Gears airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC and streams the subsequent day on Hulu.