Actor Tim Allen recently criticized DEI constraints on television shows, saying sitcoms need to be funny to succeed.
The 72-year-old “Home Improvement” alum made the comments during an appearance on Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast on Monday.
Allen suggested to Maher that DEI policies should not come at the expense of the show’s quality.
“My wife says, ‘Why do you keep saying that?’ And I said, ‘Somebody told me I was like the Tom Brady of sitcoms.’ When they asked me to do a third [show], I said, ‘I thought they were kidding,’” the comedian told Maher. “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. They wanted, you know, a potpourri of —”
Maher jumped in, saying one solution was to have “DEI in the cast.”
“I didn’t want to get into that. 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,” Allen went on.
The podcast host agreed, saying diversity wasn’t the “only virtue.”
“Not everything in America has to look like Angelina Jolie’s Christmas card, you know, sometimes, and it’s always OK in reverse. 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 continued.
The host went on to question CBS’s 2020 goal of increasing BIPOC representation in its writers’ rooms.
“I thought, what if the show they’re writing is about a polka band in a ski town?” Maher said.
“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,” Maher said. “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.”
Allen currently stars in the CBS sitcom “Shifting Gears,” which follows a father trying to reconnect with his adult daughter. Besides appearing on the well-known ‘90s series “Home Improvement,” he also starred in the popular ABC sitcom “Last Man Standing” (2011-2017).
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