It is a position to which the Dwelling Enchancment alum, dad to 35-year-old and 15-year-old daughters in actual life, can relate.

Whereas his character will get educated on pronouns, anxiousness and different points by on-screen daughter Kat Dennings and her youngsters on the ABC sitcom — premiering January 8 — its texting acronyms that actually throws Allen off in his on a regular basis world.

“What I’m utterly oblivious to is texting,” Allen instructed TooFab when requested whether or not there was something his youngsters have needed to train him over time, including that whereas he is “fairly good” with regards to sending messages over his telephone, it is messages like LMAO — or “LAMOU,” as he put it — that ship him for a loop.

“The abbreviations [are] like what we used to name Pig Latin once I was in elementary and highschool,” he mentioned, “and all the ladies had this language and I by no means bought that.”

“There is a couple textual content strings my daughters have given me and I’ve really– I believe they’re messing with me,” mentioned Allen with fun.

Persevering with to drive house the generational divide, Allen then shared a narrative about one in every of his daughters whereas engaged on his earlier sitcom, Final Man Standing.

“I instructed one of many ladies, I mentioned, ‘I bought this new system that you simply poke in numbers after which the opposite individual’s voice pops up.’ They go, ‘What?! What’s that?’” he defined, earlier than deadpanning, “I’m going, ‘It is referred to as a phone.”

“When somebody mentioned streaming is quite a bit simpler as a result of you’ll be able to file what you need, I mentioned, ‘Does anybody bear in mind a factor referred to as TiVo?’ We used to have a tv that did all of it by itself, I did not should press packing containers and check in. You may discover no matter you wished, schedule to see it, return into the recording field and watch it,” he added. “I am unsure what we’re doing now … my youngsters don’t love calling individuals. Texting and speaking are usually not the identical. I attempted to do jokes on X and I fail greater than I get, you lose one thing.”

As talked about above, Allen stars on Switching Gears as a dad who provides his grownup daughter and her youngsters someplace to crash after a breakup. It is a much-needed lifeline for Dennings’ character.

Whereas talking with the 71-year-old actor, we puzzled whether or not he might pinpoint a second in his profession the place somebody caught their neck out for him, or did him a strong when he actually wanted it. For Allen, he virtually instantly considered his late producing companion Brian Reilly, who died from pancreatic most cancers in 2011.

“I’ve a producing companion of mine, who’s been nothing however my finest good friend, and I take into consideration him on a regular basis. He handed away abruptly from pancreatic most cancers and I by no means actually bought how he stood up for me till he handed away and I by no means stopped enthusiastic about him,” Allen revealed.

He defined that their working relationship — which included partnerships on the Santa Clause movies — bought to a degree the place it was “not working” anymore and he let Reilly go, with out a lot of a heads up something was even fallacious.

“I at some point mentioned, ‘This is not working for me,’ and he checked out me and mentioned, ‘Why did not you let me know this forward of [time]?’” Allen recalled. “And I’m going, ‘I do not know why I did not try this.’”

“We by no means turned not buddies, we had been nonetheless shut buddies after that, after which I spotted how a lot he stood up for me after the very fact,” he continued. “He got here to the hospital once I bought right into a racing automobile accident and he was the primary man on the hospital, introduced by a film and one thing to eat. And I mentioned, ‘Man, this man, I completely screwed this one up.’”

However because it seems, he did not, with Allen sharing that Reilly instructed him, “I am not pissed, you do not wish to work with me and that is high quality, however I nonetheless wish to be your good friend.”

“What an incredible man,” Allen mentioned.