Kat Dennings has never cared what Hollywood-industry types think about her appearance.
Over the course of her decades-long career, the 38-year-old star of the new ABC sitcom Shifting Gears has heard a number of discouraging comments about her appearance. In an exclusive conversation with PEOPLE, the actress talks about how she learned to brush off those critiques at a young age and how she proved her naysayers wrong.
“The time that I was auditioning and starting to act, it was a very different environment than it is now,” she recalls. “There was not a lot of inclusivity at all. It was very harsh. There was a lot of extremely negative feedback and people would not hold back.”
The 2 Broke Girls alum says casting directors could be “very cruel,” even when they were “talking about a child.”
“It was pretty crazy thinking about it. I’m like, ‘How can anyone say that about a little kid? This is insane,’ ” she says. “For example, I was 12. I’d go into an audition and I’d do it, and my manager would call me and I’d be like, ‘How’d it go?’ And they’d be like, ‘Well, they thought you weren’t pretty enough and you’re fat.’ ”
The actress admits she had a “very strong” outlook on the negative feedback she’d receive from casting directors. Instead of taking their critiques as gospel, Dennings chose to believe their judgements were wrong.
“That was my attitude. For some reason, it didn’t break my spirit. I was like, ‘I’ll show them,’ ” she says with a laugh. “I guess props to my parents, because they were like, ‘They’re idiots. Don’t listen to them.’ And I was like, ‘They’re idiots, I’m not.’ ”
Though Dennings says the entertainment business was “completely insane” back then, she thinks today’s climate is “much softer, kinder” and more understanding.
“There’s body positivity, there’s inclusivity, there’s representation, and there was none of that before. It was really gross,” she adds.
Through years of grinding and auditioning, she learned to let the comments slide off her back. Now, with years of Hollywood success under her belt, Dennings stars alongside Tim Allen on Shifting Gears.
The new sitcom follows Matt (Allen), the widowed owner of a shop that restores classic cars whose estranged daughter Riley (Dennings) and her two kids move back into his home.
Before she got the call for the job, Dennings tells PEOPLE, she felt stuck in a “dark, sad moment in time,” feeling lost and unsure of her next move.
“I was like, ‘God, I don’t know what I want to do. I am just feeling so crazy,’ ” she recalls. When a friend suggested she think about what her “dream job” looked like, she realized she wanted to do another multi-cam sitcom.
“Then the next day I got this call to do this show. So it felt like I wished for something and I got it. It just felt like a meant-to-be thing,” she continues, adding that working alongside a “cultural mainstay” like Allen was a no-brainer.
“He’s Santa Claus [in The Santa Clause films] and Buzz Lightyear [in the Toy Story franchise]. He’s a big part of my consciousness growing up, so it was very surreal to work with him, but in a great way, because he’s a very kind person,” she says of working with the actor.
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Shifting Gears airs Wednesdays on ABC.
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