Tim Allen revealed whether there are plans for former Home Improvement costar Jonathan Taylor Thomas to appear on his new sitcom Shifting Gears.
“Everything is a possibility,” Allen, 71, exclusively shared in the newest issue of Us Weekly. “He just came back [to the last episode we filmed]. He showed up on the set.”
Allen said he would love nothing more than to share the screen with Thomas, 43, again, adding, “He’s literally my kid. I raised that kid for eight years on Home Improvement. All of these are my kids and I’m kind of sick about this.”
Before leading the cast of ABC’s Shifting Gears, Allen starred on Home Improvement from 1991 to 1999 alongside Thomas, Patricia Richardson, Taran Noah Smith, Zachery Ty Bryan, Richard Karn and Debbe Dunning. Thomas exited the series early to focus on school and ultimately made the decision to step back from acting entirely.
Allen and Thomas ended up reuniting on screen for four episodes of Last Man Standing. Thomas also directed three episodes of the sitcom. While Thomas has remained out of the public eye, Allen continued to find success as America’s favorite sitcom dad with his roles as Mike Baxter in Last Man Standing, which ran from 2011 to 2021, and now Matt Parker in Shifting Gears.
“[My former onscreen wife] Nancy Travis once told me [something] after I called her during Last Man Standing. I said, ‘Have you talked to the girls [who play our daughters] over the summer?’ Then there’s this long pause and she goes, ‘Tim, these aren’t our daughters and I’m not actually your wife,’” he quipped. “She was so wonderful about it because sometimes when they were having trouble on the show, I’d go, ‘How do you think they feel?’ And she would respond, ‘Tim, they’re actors. We just read [what is on the page but] she’s not really that sad.’”
On Shifting Gears, Allen plays a widowed father opposite an estranged daughter played by Kat Dennings. The duo gushed about how they “immediately” formed a connection once being cast on the show.
“The director wanted to see how we got along. It never stopped. The kismet was crazy. We’re both born on the same day — many years apart,” he told Us. “We’re different in so many ways. But our attitude about comedy is very similar. She cracks me up and I’m not easy that way. Kat can [deliver these lines] with a straight face. Her anger — that she played on 2 Broke Girls — is very similar to the sharpness that Mike Baxter could get into now.”
Allen continued: “When we argue on screen, it’s funny that we interrupt each other and it comes quite naturally. I don’t know where it’s coming from. I adore this person already. She and her husband [Andrew W.K.] are great people. It is like I’ve known her for freaking years, same as most of this cast.”
Dennings, 38, felt the same way about her bond with Allen.
“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 an exclusive interview with Us. “And he opened up really fast to me. So I [was] like, ‘OK, this guy is like letting me in.’”
The trust on set allowed Dennings and Allen to elevate their comedy skills. “It felt very organic,” Dennings 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.”
While Allen has enjoyed working on Shifting Gears, he wasn’t initially sure he would come back to sitcoms, telling Us, “It was a complicated decision. I was doing Disney+’s Santa Claus series at the time and I said, ‘I really can’t think about this now.’ Do I want to do linear TV? I was so depressed at how streaming has hurt television. So if I did it, I want to elevate it.”
Shifting Gears airs on ABC Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET before streaming the next day on Hulu.
