Shifting Gears star Tim Allen spoke to ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese about his new ABC sitcom. The hilarious show, which stars Allen and Kat Dennings, will premiere on Wednesday, January 8, at 8 p.m. ET. It will stream on Hulu the next day.
“Shifting Gears stars Tim Allen as Matt, the stubborn, widowed owner of a classic car restoration shop. When Matt’s estranged daughter (Kat Dennings) and her kids move into his house, the real restoration begins,” says the synopsis for Shifting Gears starring Tim Allen.
Tyler Treese: Tim, congrats on Shifting Gears. It’s such a fun watch, and the father-daughter element is really effective here. I expected laughs, and it delivered just that, but I actually got emotional watching the show during some of these moments. How is it that finding that balance with Kat Dennings where your characters can really go all out and after each other, but you can also have those tender exchanges?
Tim Allen: It’s something that was designed in, the reason I signed on, and we love the pilot. Because they found a beat that was so difficult to do. There was silence on the set when we did it. When she and I related our feelings about her mother and my wife, and I became to appreciate the great actors that I noticed and watch all the time that can do this stuff. I’m a comedian, I do funny stuff real well. And the other side of that is drama. And when we did it, a lot of it was unexpected, and the dialogue was there, and as soon as I read it about something lost that you didn’t want to get rid of, I got emotional. I read it, and I said, “How am I gonna do this?” And Kat made it simple.
She and I, for some reason, born the same day, many years apart, have…I feel like this conundrum that I do feel like I’m related to her. And I said it, our pissy attitude is very similar. When we argue, it’s the same decibel. It’s hard to describe how organic this thing feels. And that’s a word I’ve learned from great actors that I’ve worked with. And I said, when it got emotional, I said, when I decided to do this, I do want this guy in pain that he lost the love of his life, and you don’t ever meet the wife. She went out jogging a very healthy woman and had one of those heart attacks that no one saw coming. Then next day, two seconds later, you don’t have a wife.
We have to deal with that. I want to deal with that probably longer than they will and probably shorter than I can. She’s lost her mother. The only thing that teams us is how selfish we dealt with that moment. And, it was really powerful in that scene, and I said, it’s one of those ones where they go, “I think we got it.” And that says a lot where the director was saying I don’t think…maybe we didn’t get the lighting and the sound or whatever, but I don’t think we can do better than that. When you hear the set is quiet and it affected teamsters and IATSE [International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees] guys all around, were all going, “Oh, I don’t feel so good.” You know, you get all these guys on jibs and on camera pedestals going, “Okay.” I needed a moment, I just kind of sat in the other scene going “Oh, that didn’t feel so good.” You know, you’re pushing a feeling that isn’t organic to me. I mean, I had to make it up. So you have to draw from something. I said I appreciate what actors do. It’s a weird skill set, I’ll tell you that.
The rants throughout these first two episodes are also top-notch. I was dying at the “Jesus didn’t use Uber” line that had me laughing so hard. How much of those are written and how much is that you just going organic with it and going off on things?
There’s…it’s a process that I’ve gotten to the point where I said, “I’m not always right.” What I sometimes tell them in the best way is that eventually, I have to ride the horse. You gotta prep the horse, feed the horse, brush the horse, get the shoes on the horse, get everything ready in the racetrack. But essentially, I’m going to have to ride the horse, use what you have, and then use my skill set, and it is a skill set that I’ve used for years and years, and I ad-lib or I come up with some bits, these guys are extremely good. They’re not judgmental, and I’m further down the road.
Look, I don’t know what Tom Brady was like when he went to Tampa Bay. How do you go from all those winners to Tampa Bay? If you don’t know football, he goes, “Let me just have a slot receiver,” or whatever they go, “Well, that’s not really how we do it here, Tom. We do it like this.” Well, I don’t know how to say this, but that’s how I’m gonna do it. And you use my skill set if you can. I’m listening, and I want this to be a community effort, but eventually, somebody’s gotta ride the horse.
Thanks to Shifting Gear’s Tim Allen for taking the time to talk about the new sitcom.
