Real Time host Bill Maher welcomed Shifting Gears star Tim Allen to his Club Random podcast on Monday (January 5), where the pair discussed how diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices shouldn’t “intrude” on the creative process.
The topic came up when Allen revealed that someone told him he “was like the Tom Brady of sitcoms” after landing his third major sitcom role on ABC’s auto restoration shop-based comedy, Shifting Gears. Allen played the lead role in ABC’s hit 1990s sitcom Home Improvement and ABC’s (and later Fox’s) sporting goods store sitcom Last Man Standing.
“When they asked me to do a third one, I said, ‘I thought they were kidding,’” Allen told Maher, per the New York Post. “I don’t know whether my generation—because all the people that I know that I would make it with are either dead or not the right gender, you know, they’re all light-skinned European older men—and that doesn’t fit the DEI thing that everybody wanted.”
Maher interrupted, telling Allen, “You can have DEI in the cast.”
Shifting Gears stars Allen as widower Matt Parker, Kat Dennings as his daughter Riley Parker, Seann William Scott as Gabriel, Daryl “Chill” Mitchell as Stitch, Maxwell Simkins as Carter, and Barrett Margolis as Georgia.
Disney / Justin Stephens
“I didn’t want to get into that,” Allen said, referring to DEI. “I didn’t want to patronize people. If you’re going to do a sitcom, it’s just got to be funny. You got to have some drama.”
Maher said he “couldn’t agree more,” saying diversity is a “great virtue, but it’s not the only one.” He added, “Not everything in America has to look like Angelina Jolie’s Christmas card, you know.”
The HBO host went on to say, “It’s always okay in reverse. You know, it’s like if there’s something where it’s just an all-black cast… and good, I’m all for it. I’m not complaining about it.”
Maher has criticized DEI policies in the past, especially after CBS announced an initiative in 2020 to employ a minimum of 40% Black, indigenous, and people of color representation in writers’ rooms.
“I thought, what if the show they’re writing is about a polka band in a ski town?” Maher said, according to the NY Post.
He continued, “I love people of color, and I’m so glad that things are better than they used to be for people of color, but you know, it shouldn’t intrude on the creative process to the degree it has in this town. It has intruded on the creative process. And by the way, lots of people of color agree with that because they want the creative process to be pure, too.”
When Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, he quickly ended DEI initiatives within the federal government. Several companies scrapped their own DEI policies following the President’s move.
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