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LOS ANGELES — Kat Dennings has been daydreaming about turning herself into a perturbed porcupine. Well, not literally. But if the “2 Broke Girls” actress had her way, she would wear a leather jacket covered in sharp metal spikes when she mingles with advertisers on Wednesday as part of CBS’s upfront presentation.
Upfronts, an annual show-and-tell for advertisers, are important to networks trying to sell their fall lineups. That being the case, one should be on one’s best behavior. “But it’s a mob, and some people grab you, or at least that’s my experience,” Ms. Dennings said. “It’s kind of overwhelming.”
If Ms. Dennings, 25, felt manhandled a year ago, when “2 Broke Girls” was just another laugh-track CBS sitcom awaiting its debut, she is right to worry about what awaits her this time around. The series, which stars Ms. Dennings and Beth Behrs as waitresses with R-rated mouths, overcame early complaints of racial stereotyping and crude humor to become the season’s No. 1 new comedy.
Original episodes of “2 Broke Girls” attracted an average of 13.4 million viewers through April 29, according to Nielsen. (To compare, Fox’s “New Girl” ranked second among new comedies, attracting about nine million viewers.)
The show is so popular that some media buyers think CBS will risk moving “2 Broke Girls” to the all-important Thursday night lineup, pairing it with “The Big Bang Theory” to form a must-see comedy block. CBS declined to comment ahead of its Wednesday scheduling announcement.
Ms. Dennings has struck a chord on “2 Broke Girls” with her portrayal of Max, who has a murderous sideways glance and an offbeat, deadpan wit. Somewhere inside is a sweetheart, but it’s buried under a bawdy sense of humor. (Pity the ketchup bottle in a recent episode.)
“Kat is incredibly interesting because she’s the ironic indie girl succeeding in a big, broad comedy,” said Brent Poer, executive creative director at LiquidThread, a unit of Starcom MediaVest, the media buying agency. “You talk to the other networks, and they all say, ‘I wish I had that show,’ and Kat is a big reason why.”
Even so, casting such a young actress in an anchor role was a risky move for CBS, which tends to build comedies around established stars. But younger performers help draw the younger viewers that Madison Avenue pays a premium to reach: “2 Broke Girls” attracts the youngest audience of any CBS show except for “How I Met Your Mother.”
Broadcast television as a whole has been succeeding with what Hollywood refers to as “quirky girl” sitcoms — character actresses as leading ladies. Perhaps riding an entertainment pendulum shift started by the film “Bridesmaids,” entries include Fox’s “New Girl,” which stars Zooey Deschanel, and ABC’s “Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23,” starring Krysten Ritter as an eccentric, manipulative roommate.
The new shows that networks will unveil this week are stuffed with similar characters. One prominent pilot stars Mindy Kaling, known for “The Office,” as an idiosyncratic gynecologist.
You get the feeling from spending time with Ms. Dennings that she’s not entirely comfortable with her breakout status. She calls herself “socially weird” and said that popping up at stylish restaurants or attending endless Hollywood parties would make her “vomitous.” She lives in the low-key Studio City neighborhood here.
“I think she just sits on her couch on the weekends, and that’s one of the things that I love about her,” said Michael Patrick King, the executive producer and co-creator of “2 Broke Girls.” “There’s nothing manufactured about her, and that comes through on-screen. People are responding to her because it feels like an individual has wandered into their living room.”
Ms. Dennings, pretty with a playful touch of Goth style, points out that she has never followed the early advice casting agents gave her: tighten up your teeth, dye your hair, lose weight, get a tan. Unlike many actresses, Ms. Dennings does not pretend that “2 Broke Girls” is art, insisting that Max is little more than a heightened version of herself.
“Take away the booze and drugs — I’m so not that girl — and it’s not much of a stretch,” she said over a cappuccino recently. “I basically thought that playing someone so close to myself would be less exhausting.” She paused for deadpan effect. “So much for that idea.”
Ms. Dennings said she was not initially interested in TV work, even though the small screen is where she got her start as a teenager, playing a girl on “Sex and the City” who gave Samantha a run for her oversexed money. (Mr. King, an executive producer of that HBO series, helped cast her.) But Ms. Dennings decided that movie roles were more interesting; she wondered whether she could remain interested in a TV show that, in success, would require her to play the same part for years.
And she was gaining traction in bigger movies, landing a role as Natalie Portman’s sidekick in Marvel’s “Thor,” for instance. “She more than held her own next to an Oscar-winning actress and a superhero, which is not easy,” said Louis D’Esposito, co-president of Marvel Studios. Ms. Dennings also played the female lead in “Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist,” a comedic romance that sputtered at the box office but won her strong reviews.
Then Ms. Dennings’s agents gave her the script for “2 Broke Girls,” which is set in a Brooklyn greasy spoon, a kind of modern-day “Alice.” “I read it, and was like, ‘Oh, no. It’s good,’ ” Ms. Dennings said.
CBS had been tracking Ms. Dennings for years, according to Nina Tassler, president of CBS Entertainment, who compared the actress to a young Candice Bergen. “Kat’s rhythms and timing are unique to her, and that’s rare,” Ms. Tassler said. “The difference is that she’s an actress doing comedy versus a comedienne doing comedy.” (Warner Brothers produces “2 Broke Girls” for CBS.)
Ms. Dennings, who lists knitting and painting as hobbies, grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs as Katherine Litwack, the youngest of five children; her mother is a speech therapist turned full-time poet and her father is a molecular pharmacologist. Her parents schooled her at home. Ms. Dennings said she finished all of her course work by 14. She then moved to Los Angeles with her mother to pursue acting.
“I’ve always had kind of an attitude so the rejection became fairly easy,” she said. “If you don’t like me, it’s your problem.”
Although she was not allowed to watch TV as a child, Ms. Dennings said she soaked up old movie musicals like “Top Hat,” a 1935 picture starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Bernadette Peters and Madeline Kahn remain two of her favorite actresses. She said she memorized segments of “Let’s Get Small,” Steve Martin’s 1977 comedy album, when she was only 3 years old and performed it for her parents. “I saw the reaction it got, and I was hooked,” Ms. Dennings said.
For fans wanting a closer look at Ms. Dennings, her blog is a kind of study guide. Listed are her “all time favorite things: cute fluffy animals, decorating, shell collecting, snow and presents.” She jogs, plays poker and eats frozen grapes — when she’s not killing spiders in her apartment or watching TV.
Mostly her blog posts reflect her dry, somewhat wacky sense of humor. “My lip is bleeding, and I don’t know why,” she wrote last July. “I don’t recall making out with a lawn mower. Although anything can happen when under the influence of ice water.”
It’s that time of the year again! People’s Choice Awards are coming up and you can vote now. Kat and Beth are nominated with 2 Broke Girls in the category Favourite New TV Comedy.
You don’t have to register and you can go back to vote again and again! Let’s get Kat and Beth on the stage to accept the award, everyone! Vote here! If you have the time, please vote for other categories as well :)
Thanks to the lovely people at Warner Bros. TV for sending us newHQimages of Kat in 2 Broke Girls!
’2 Broke Girls’ Star Kat Dennings Wants to ‘Bring the Sitcom Back’
‘The show’s not just a ha-ha machine,’ she says in our Hot Issue
By Jonah Weiner
Photos by Lauren Dukoff
Never mind that, at 25, Kat Dennings has acted in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Thor, that she co-stars on 2 Broke Girls, television’s most popular new sitcom, or that her title role opposite Michael Cera in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist made her the cult-crush object of thousands of Michael Cera-ish boys nationwide: She has zero interest in Young Hollywood life. “I live in the Valley,” she says. “I’m a reclusive weirdo.”
Dennings is at a Valley cafe, decked out in don’t-notice-me gear: gray hoodie, blue jeans, oversize handbag clutched over her chest like a shield. She takes out her phone to show me how a reclusive weirdo decorates her apartment. “I forget the artist, but I love these prints,” she says, zooming in on a photo of a drawing of Jesus flanked by the StarKist tuna mascot and Popeye. “Their bodies are made of organs, like eyeballs, intestines and stuff.” I raise an eyebrow. “The more unsettling,” she says, “the more I feel at home.”
Dennings is the Pennsylvania-bred daughter of a biochemist dad and speech-therapist mom, whose appeal lies in her unsunny, unsentimental disposition. On 2 Broke Girls, playing a tough Brooklyn waitress called Max, she spends half her scenes sighing scornfully, and the other half making vagina jokes, but she says the writers are going to draw on her dramatic chops, too. “The show’s not just a ha-ha machine,” she says. “I grew up watching The Golden Girls, The Nanny – I want to bring the sitcom back.”
This story is from the November 10, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone.
Thanks to Allstars-Online.Net, we have some new outtakes from photoshoots up in the gallery! If anyone knows anything about the “Unknown” photoshoot, please tell us the photographer or the occasion/time so we can update the gallery. Thanks :)
IN her dressing room, so newly occupied that the only visible decoration was a bag of Reese’s Pieces, Kat Dennings was pointing out the couch where she’d had a minor meltdown here on the Warner Brothers lot the night before.
That evening she was preparing to face a studio audience and film her second episode of “2 Broke Girls,” a CBS comedy that will make its debut on Monday, and she freely admitted she didn’t handle the pressure well.
“I was talking on the phone to my mother,” said Ms. Dennings, 25, a spirited, self-deprecating actress whose film credits include “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” and “Thor.” “I was like: ‘Mom, there’s no air. I’m going to throw up. What do I do?’ She’s like: ‘Go out there, you’ll be great. Go get some water. Eat a piece of fruit.’ ”
Ms. Dennings said she was revitalized once she took the stage, but she might want to keep her mother on speed dial anyway. This season she is among a handful of actresses in their 20s and 30s who are hardly household names yet have been given the pressure, the obligation and the opportunity of carrying their own network shows.
In a crop of new series that run the gamut from bawdy comedies (like “2 Broke Girls,” on which Ms. Dennings plays a sassy waitress who befriends an heiress who’s hit the skids) to “Mad Men”-style period dramas, the notoriously dues-paying medium of television has turned to these relatively untested young women to be the faces and voices of its broadcast networks.
Their résumés vary considerably. Some have played one or two prominent film parts or labored in the salt mines of supporting television roles, while others have hardly been seen on screen before. One possesses a quaint acting trophy called a Tony Award. None has the long track record or recognizability that usually prefigures a starring prime-time role.
Yet they understand that they came to their positions through some combination of the shifting popular culture, coincidence and the experimentation (or random flailing) of the networks — not any specific outreach to female talent or viewers.
“I don’t think that these shows are on because women are the stars of them,” said Whitney Cummings, 29, a creator of “2 Broke Girls” and the star of her own NBC comedy, “Whitney.” “The shows that just happened to be the best this year happened to be centered around women.”
They are also hopeful that their shows — if they survive the season — might signify a moment when characters who are their ages and in circumstances they recognize from their lives are finally considered worthy of their own narratives.
“There is something very interesting about a woman in her late 20s, early 30s,” said Laura Benanti, a Tony winner for the 2008 revival of “Gypsy” who is co-starring in the NBC drama “The Playboy Club.” “She’s clearly on the cusp of something, changing from something into something else. And that leads to many more stories to tell.”
It is a first-year class that includes Zooey Deschanel, a star of the romantic comedy “(500) Days of Summer” and lead singer of the retro-rock band She & Him. She is playing a socially awkward single woman living with male roommates in the Fox comedy “New Girl.” At 31, she has had a healthy film career, but she said her goofy charm made her an oddity in the movie industry. As she described it, the reaction she elicits from Hollywood is: “ ‘She’s not a cheerleader, she’s not a jock, she’s not a goth. We don’t know what to do with her. Who is she?’ Well, I’m my own thing.”
Ms. Deschanel said that the offbeat roles she covets have become even harder to come by in recent years, and Ms. Dennings echoed this point, saying that the harsh reality of filmmaking economics was a strong incentive to consider a transition to television. “It was really disappointing to lose something because you won’t get any money for the production,” she said.
Without comparable film or television credits, Ms. Cummings has been making her own luck as a stand-up comedian, parlaying jobs on Comedy Central’s celebrity roasts into a one-hour special and a pilot deal with that network. Though that project was not made into a series, it caught the attention of Michael Patrick King, who produced “Sex and the City” and directed its two films, with whom Ms. Cummings wrote the pilot script for “2 Broke Girls.” That show, in turn, was picked up by CBS just as NBC gave the green light to “Whitney,” a comedy about Ms. Cummings’s relationship with a live-in boyfriend. (She continues to receive creative and consulting credits on “2 Broke Girls.”)
Though she knows unfamiliar viewers may believe she is the beneficiary of overnight success, Ms. Cummings said she had been “aggressively, violently failing” for years.
“I’m calling my agents: ‘Will they see me for that part? Do they want to meet me?’ ” Ms. Cummings said. “They’re like, ‘No, just go to law school, you’re embarrassing yourself.’ ”
It is that do-it-yourself spirit that these women most admire about professional idols like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Chelsea Handler (whose memoir “Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea” is being adapted as an NBC comedy), and they want to see that quality reflected in the roles they play: independent, un-self-conscious, occasionally foul-mouthed characters once reserved exclusively for male performers.
(As Ms. Dennings put it, “Women are supposed to be mysterious, and there’s a veil you don’t cross, but vagina jokes are just gold, man.”)
In the pilot episode of the deeply irreverent comedy “Apartment 23,” which ABC is planning for a midseason debut, the lead character played by Krysten Ritter sells drugs, lets her neighbors watch her walk around naked and splits up her roommate from her fiancé.
But Ms. Ritter, 29, who has appeared on “Breaking Bad” and in movies like “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” said she saw her character as “this disenfranchised girl who refuses to conform and makes her money in these twisted ways.” She added: “I think that speaks to a generation. Everyone’s out there hustling. No one wants to climb a corporate ladder anymore.”
To find these roles two actresses said they had to turn the clock back to the 1960s, or at least the version of that decade depicted in “The Playboy Club,” a drama about the Chicago nightspot and its bunny-costumed hostesses during an era of social upheaval.
This series has already met resistance from KSL Television, an NBC affiliate in Salt Lake City that said it will not broadcast it, and Gloria Steinem, who once worked at the Playboy Club in New York, who said the show “normalizes prostitution and male dominance.”
Amber Heard, who portrays one of the principal Bunnies, said she was “playing a real character.” “In the ’60s, there were different opportunities and responsibilities afforded to women,” said Ms. Heard, 25, who has appeared in the films “Pineapple Express” and the coming “Rum Diary.”
“That being said, in 2011 I am a part of a group of women who do not have to choose between combat boots and an apron,” Ms. Heard continued. “Denying a woman’s sexuality is just as chauvinistic, if not worse.”
Ms. Benanti, 32, who plays a Bunny being pushed out of her job at the age of 30, drew a more direct line from the transgressive “Playboy Club” characters to the present day. “It’s because of women like this,” she said, “who are creating options for themselves that you get to have shows like ‘Whitney.’ ”
It’s not only the series about women clad in cottontails that have the potential to rile viewers. Ms. Ritter’s series, “Apartment 23,” has already had its title shortened from “Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23.” (“My publicist said it’s for the best they’re not calling it that,” she lamented. “We’d have such a hard time.”)
And “2 Broke Girls” and “New Girl” have stirred debate by describing their adult protagonists as girls, though Ms. Dennings said she fully endorsed the title of her show.
“When someone describes me as a woman,” she said, “I’m like, ‘Ucch, O.K.’ It’s like being called ‘ma’am.’ It’s more of a proper term, and propriety doesn’t have much of a place in TV comedy.”
Among the actresses there was no consensus as to why all of their shows landed in the same season. Maybe the success of the summer film comedy “Bridesmaids” demonstrated a larger appetite for stories about young women, or maybe enough female writers had risen through the ranks to create them. (In addition to the female creators of “Whitney” and “2 Broke Girls,” “New Girl” was created by Elizabeth Meriwether, the screenwriter of “No Strings Attached,” and “Apartment 23” was created by Nahnatchka Khan, a producer of “American Dad!”)
Or maybe, Ms. Benanti said, “networks have finally realized that women are watching television, and they buy things.”
Whatever had brought them together these women said they felt a strong sense of camaraderie with the actresses they already knew and those they hoped to meet someday: they were watching one another’s pilots and sending supportive messages on Twitter.
“There’s room for everybody,” Ms. Ritter said. “If one is successful, we all get to come up together. It’s all about cheering each other on.”
Ms. Deschanel agreed, saying, “It’s feeling like a very exciting time to be a woman.” She paused to correct herself: “A girl. A lady. Female. It always feels like it doesn’t describe me because it seems too old. But I’m a grown woman, I know.”
You should get to know Kat Dennings. From her role as a vapid teenager in The 40-Year-Old Virgin to her breakout turn as Michael Cera’s jaded dream girl in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, the soon-to-be-25-year-old actress is fast becoming one of Hollywood’s hottest young commodities.
After growing up in the woods of Bryn Mawr, the homeschooled beauty made her way to Hollywood, where she honed her untrained acting chops on the small screen with bit parts in ER, CSI: and Sex and the City. She soon graduated to film, where her innate cheekiness won over audiences in Virgin, The House Bunny and, of course, Nick and Norah.
Today Dennings is busier than ever, shuffling between an incongruous mix of dark drama, outrageous comedy and even a giant blockbuster. She’s currently delving into the lead role for Renee—its namesake, Renee Yohe, the inspiration behind the nonprofit addiction-and depression-treatment organization To Write Love on Her Arms.
Meanwhile she’s anxiously awaiting this month’s release of Thor, her first foray into big-budget Hollywood, costarring good bud Natalie Portman. She’s even back on the small screen, signing on with UPenn alum Whitney Cummings to star in the comedy pilot Two Broke Girls. Somewhere in between takes, she sat down and talked to Philadelphia Style about eschewing industry norms, her obsession with Twitter and endearing childhood memories of Philly.
Tell us about growing up in Bryn Mawr. KAT DENNINGS: I grew up in the sticks; we lived on a hill in the woods. I seriously had such an amazing Laura Ingalls Wilder childhood. There were a lot of wood activities, playing with the horses, doing farm-girl stuff. Talking about it makes me sad! I look back and I’m like, Why didn’t I take more pictures?
What do you miss most? KD: I hope it’s still there, but there’s a place called The Head Nut. I have such fond memories of that place. And I always hung out at Wynnewood Lanes and Flower Mill Park.
Do you ever make it back here? KD: I still have some family there, and we try to head back for the holidays.
Did you always know that acting was something you wanted to do? KD: Since I saw my first movie when I was a baby. I really didn’t know what it was, but I knew that whatever movies were, that’s what I wanted to do. We went to an actual theater only once every six months, but we would just check out movies from the library—classics like An American in Paris, Madeline Kahn movies and Steve Martin movies. I was spoiled; I had a great film education.
Do you feel more like a Hollywood insider or outsider? KD: I’m kind of outside the culture of my job. I don’t really enjoy the schmoozing, the parties—it’s not really my thing. I love the people, but I would just rather get coffee than get all dressed up to go to a restaurant that nobody wants to be at.
You had been in a bunch of movies before you broke out with Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. What was the best part of that experience? KD: It was really a collaborative experience, and it taught me you can speak up and talk, which I couldn’t do before that. And the friendships—it was like camp. It’s like watching home video of you and your friends, only hopefully, it’s not as annoying.
It was just announced that you’re doing a pilot called Two Broke Girls with Whitney Cummings. There seems to be a trend lately of feature-film actors jumping into TV pilots—what made you take this role? KD: First of all, I’m kind of obsessed with Whitney! But TV? It’s super weird and not something I ever really considered, but [executive producer] Michael Patrick King is the nicest person you could ever meet. I worked on Sex and the City with him when I was 12, and he has been a force in my head ever since. Once I saw it was his show, I was like, Whoa, this might be an interesting, kind of amazing thing to do. I literally read it, thought about it for two seconds, and then said yes.
You’re now playing Renee Yohe, the inspiration behind the charity organization To Write Love on Her Arms. Are you channeling anything in your own life to play her? KD:Renee is about depression, addiction and suicide prevention, so I go through some dark things. But the message really is about love and what you do with it, if you let people in to help you. I’m notoriously straitlaced; I’ve never had any substance-abuse problems. But we all have been hopeless and sad and lost, and have had tragedy in our lives, and I draw from that.
You’re filming Renee on the heels of Thor, which couldn’t be a bigger departure from what you’ve done. What was it like to work on such a big-budget production? KD: Oh my God, the difference between what I’m used to and that movie was so incredible, so awe-inspiring in every way. It was a complete 180. Kenneth Branagh directed it, and he is amazing. He is my personal Thor.
What kind of acting haven’t you done? KD: I really want to do a period piece. Badly. Maybe it’s the corsets. I want to do accents and that kind of stuff.
You’re known for your blogging and your obsession with Twitter. What’s the fascination? KD: It’s a way for me to see if I can be clever in 140 characters. It’s a writing challenge for my own perverse entertainment.
