By Michaela Gordoni
SHIFTING GEARS showrunner Michelle Nadar sometimes has a bone to pick with the sitcom’s star Tim Allen.
“Believe me, we go back and [forth] with him and I. We definitely go back and forth on things because we both have strong opinions about stuff,” she told Us Weekly. “Ultimately, Tim has to play it right, so he has to be comfortable.”
“It’s a sense of authenticity to his character and who Tim is too. We’re very different, obviously. And we come at it from male and female perspectives,” she said.
She considers his requests and offers an example of how he makes his character authentic.
“Tim trusts me and then I trust him. He was the one that said, ‘I wouldn’t want to be in a long-distance relationship because I wouldn’t at my age want to do that,'” Nader said about his character, Matt, and girlfriend Eve. “I didn’t understand, but I was like, ‘OK, alright.’ Then we figured out how to make that poignant, and I think it worked.”
Nader acknowledged that life is complicated in different ways when you’re a guy in your 70s.
Related: SHIFTING GEARS Season 2 Glimpses Grief and Finding Love Again
“I always wanted to respect the fact that Matt was this guy who lost his wife. He was a widower and he would still visit her,” she said. “I wanted to give him the right kind of respect and he wasn’t really ready to really fully commit.”
When the writers introduced Eve, the show took a turn for the better.
“Let’s just talk about that magical person. She was the right person,” Nader shared.
“That’s the thing about sitcoms is inner emotions that everybody thinks are really heightened,” she said. “But they’re really heightened in real moments of reality — or else they don’t resonate.”
Allen said his character is a lot like himself.
“I was a design student and a philosopher, and my stand-up comedy is really about messing with people in a good way,” he said last month. “I came from a huge family run by women. So my perspective is very different about men.”
“I don’t think we run things. So I want this to be that guy. He’s not a ‘man’s man’ in that erm, and he wasn’t trying to be anything but what he does,” he said.
He’s shared commonalities with several of his sitcom characters, but he says Matt is the closest match.
“I’ve been through grief in my life with losing my father,” he said. “I’ve been blessed to be a comedian, and so that’s who this [character] is. If I did it again, I wanted to get as much closer to the [man] that I am.”
The show’s status for Season 3 is up in the air. Cinema Blend reported a renewal is likely because the ratings are high, there are two huge cliffhangers in Season 2 and Nadar has mentioned she’s excited about what’s next.
One of the cliffhangers is if Matt will chase after Eve to Barcelona.
“I don’t think this is a ‘will they or won’t they’ anymore,” Nadar said in another interview. “They are in it now. The question becomes: How do they make it work?”
SHIFTING GEARS Season 2 has officially wrapped, but news of whether the show will continue should come before spring is over.
Read Next: Tim Allen Reveals What Makes SHIFTING GEARS Stand Apart From Other Hit Shows
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