LAST MAN STANDING’s Nancy Travis is revealing a subtle “inside joke” placed in a recent episode of SHIFTING GEARS she guest starred in.
“There’s a wink in the episode where you know that there’s a past,” Travis told Us Weekly about how the show acknowledged her past with Tim Allen. “People that are fans and loyal followers of Tim’s shows will really love that inside joke.”
The Tim Allen-led comedy tells the story of Matt, a car restorer who’s trying to adjust to life with his estranged daughter and her kids. Travis played Charlotte in the Feb. 12 episode 6: “Valentine’s.” In the episode, Charlotte tells Matt he reminds her of his “last man,” a nod to their show LAST MAN STANDING.
“You wonder how Nancy Travis is going to come back into this SHIFTING GEARS world and I think it’s a unique and clever way that they’ve engineered this,” Travis said. “I will say — even on LAST MAN STANDING — it’s almost like a trademark of Tim’s shows where there are winks. Because the people that have followed his career from HOME IMPROVEMENT, his stand-up comedy, LAST MAN STANDING and now SHIFTING GEARS, they know the details of these stories and these characters so deeply.”
“They’re looking for a little inside joke or nod,” she said. “There were many of them on LAST MAN STANDING so I knew there would be something. I just didn’t know where it would come or how it would come. Viewers will be looking for it too so it is a nice little bow they put on our scenes together.”
Allen is known for his roles as Tim Taylor in HOME IMPROVEMENT and Mike Baxter in LAST MAN STANDING, where he played Travis’ husband for almost 10 years.
“Tim is nothing if not loyal,” she said. “So it was great to walk on that set and see most of the crew was from LAST MAN STANDING. The director John Pasquin did so many episodes of LAST MAN STANDING and is a personal friend.”
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“It was just so great to feel this sense of reunion,” Travis continued. “I wouldn’t be surprised if everybody from LAST MAN STANDING shows up on SHIFTING GEARS in one way or another. If Tim has his way, he’ll make sure that everybody from [costar Kat Dennings’] 2 BROKE GIRLS comes on too.”
Though Travis was excited to star alongside Allen again, she was also glad that she wasn’t in the same old role as his wife.
“It was really fun to be able to just come in and have a whole wealth of knowledge and rapport working with Tim. In terms of comedic rhythm, knowing how to set up a joke and how to tell a story together, it was great to be able to take that and apply it to Charlotte.”
“I do enjoy working with him but I think that it’s fun to explore new and different relationships between characters. It is very meta — maybe too meta,” she told Us. “I really like what they created, which is a soulmate friend.”
“Maybe it’s like the ghost of his ex-wife — Vanessa — who comes in the spirit of somebody else,” she said. “But I like the nuances of what they created with this different relationship.”
The actress explored where she thinks her and Allen’s characters from LAST MAN STANDING would be now.
“When we would film a scene on LAST MAN STANDING, one would be as written and then we would joke around about what would be the most extreme version of this scene. We would call that version when the door slams shut,” she shared. “If this show was on network TV, it would probably be Vanessa and Mike in rocking chairs bickering. But who knows what it would be when the door slams shut if they were on cable?”
Travis’s episode doesn’t leave any hope for romance between her character and Allen’s, but Matt has another love interest making her way onto the show on Feb. 26. Jenna Elfman is set to play Eve Drake, owner of the dance studio across from Matt’s car shop.
The next guest star to appear on the show is Jay Leno, who, like Allen, is a classic car fan with an extensive personal collection. In the show, Leno plays a character bringing his car in for a repair. He previously played a mechanic in LAST MAN STANDING.
