Kat Dennings had her future planned out from a young age.
While chatting with Kylie Kelce on the Thursday, March 13, episode of the “Not Gonna Lie” podcast, Dennings, 38, revealed she chose her stage name when she was just 9 years old. “My real last name is Litwack. That’s all you need to hear. That’s that,” she quipped. “And at 9, I was like, ‘This isn’t gonna work for me. This is not gonna work.’”
Dennings joked that she had a “CEO” mindset at the time, stating, “I was like, ‘This [name] can’t be displayed on a poster. It shan’t happen.’”
The last name Dennings was actually inspired by one of the actress’ loved ones. “Do you happen to know who Lloyd Alexander is? He’s a children’s author who wrote The Black Cauldron, among many other classics. Randomly, he was my mother’s best friend,” she explained to Kelce, 32, noting that she would visit the author and his wife every week until she was 15. “They were, like, my grandparents, he and his wife.”
She continued, “His wife’s name was Janine Denni. She was French. … And I thought it would be a super sick idea if I took her name and made it kind of different. Literally, that was the thinking. That’s as far as it went.”
As for her first name, Dennings (whose given name is Katherine), took on the nickname Kat as a nod to Christina Ricci’s character in 1995’s Casper, which was one of her favorite movies.
Dennings reflected on the early days of her acting journey on the podcast, recalling how her first manager required her clients to attend her husband’s “acting studio.” The class, however, turned out to be anything but a learning experience.
“This guy just tore into these kids like you wouldn’t believe. I mean, soul-crushing to the point where a teenage boy left the room crying. It was so horrible,” she recalled. “And they had me read a Chiclet[s] commercial, like, a fake commercial off a paper, and that was an exercise or something. I don’t know. And I did a bad job because, of course, I’m 9 years old. And he was like, ‘That was terrible. You’re never going to be an actress. You have no instincts.’ I was like, ‘I’m selling imaginary Chiclets, sir. Like, what instincts exist for this this [age]?’”
During one of the classes, Dennings said she “gave a pep talk to this very cute 16-year-old teenage boy who was crying,” adding, “I’m like, ‘It’s gonna be OK. I really don’t think he knows what he’s talking about. You should act anyway. Don’t listen to him.’”
Despite the teacher’s criticisms of her abilities, Dennings went on to build a notable Hollywood career in movies such as Raise Your Voice, The House Bunny, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and Thor, as well as TV shows including 2 Broke Girls, WandaVision and Dollface. Dennings currently stars alongside Tim Allen on the ABC sitcom Shifting Gears.
“He can suck it,” she said of her old acting instructor. “That said, I’m sure he’s a great person and he has his tough love ways, but I didn’t have a great experience in the acting class world. Now, I know a lot of people absolutely thrive on that and there are wonderful places and I’m sure that’s great. I’m not good at that.”
