A bra scene was in the 2 Broke Girls script until Kat Dennings said one line to the showrunner
Dennings was early in the show's run and says she had no leverage. She asked anyway, and the scene never made it to the floor.
Here’s one for anyone who watched 2 Broke Girls and ever wondered exactly how far the show would have gone if the stars hadn’t put their foot down. In a recent TikTok, Kat Dennings let fans in on a bit of backstage wrangling during the sitcom’s earliest days—namely, how she managed to kill off a fairly ridiculous bra-only scene with nothing but a pithy comeback.
2 Broke Girls clocked up six seasons on CBS, running from 2011 to 2017.
Early Days, Odd Requests
Dennings was revisiting the era—early Series 1 or 2—when she and her co-star Beth Behrs were still relatively new to the primetime TV game. She described a table read where the script called for both Max (her character) and Caroline (Behrs) to dash round their apartment in nothing but bras. Now, if you’ve seen the show, you know it had its fair share of near-the-knuckle gags, but this clearly hit Dennings as a step too far. Instead of grumbling quietly, she went straight to showrunner Michael Patrick King after the read to explain the issue.
As Dennings admitted, she wasn’t exactly in a powerful position—she and Behrs were ‘young and very lucky to be on a show that was successful’. Still, she asked for the scene to be changed so their characters were at least wearing normal clothes. King, however, didn’t immediately budge, insisting, ‘No, I mean, this is the scene.’
Five Words That Ended It
Here’s Dennings, in her own words on TikTok, describing how she brought things to a screeching halt:
‘You don’t pay me enough for a bra scene.’
With that, the infamous scene simply ‘vanished’ from the script. Dennings pointed out in her video, ‘Never underestimate yourself, is the moral of the story. And they weren’t paying me enough, although I don’t think anyone could.’ No notes.
Not Her First Rodeo
If you’re wondering whether Dennings has dealt with this sort of pressure before—absolutely. Just last year she talked about auditioning aged 12 and getting savaged with feedback about her appearance. Her reaction at the time, rather becoming, was simply, ‘I’ll show them.’ Defiance seems to be a bit of a calling card.
2 Broke Girls was co-created by King and comedian Whitney Cummings. The show was famous (or infamous) for dancing close to the edge with raunchy jokes, yet it still aired at 8 p.m.—right at the top of primetime. But there are clearly limits, at least for some of the talent actually expected to act this stuff out.
Read more: 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, 927,000 views in two days — and Prime Video cancelled it anyway