Conservative Tim Allen Says He’s ‘Admires’ How ‘Last Man Standing’ Pushed Political Conversation

Tim Allen spoke proudly about how his show Last Man Standing embraced the polarizing conversation of politics during Fox’s summer press day panel on Thursday.

“It’s funny that this group, left and right among us, we didn’t like when we were told early on by both networks [ABC and Fox] that we might want to avoid talking about [politics],” said Allen, a well-known conservative. “I loved that we all are the type of people who said, ‘Well, screw that, we’re going to talk about it anyway.’ What I’ve always appreciated about this group is that we have a broad range of attitudes. We really pushed a little bit, and I really admire that.”

Executive producer Kevin Abbott agreed with Allen, saying that the strategy worked well for the show because it blended everyone’s ideologies on both sides of the camera.

“Our attitude is that you don’t have to agree with everything I say, but we should communicate and we should share our ideas in a respectful manner,” Abbott said. “Which is not currently being done out there in the general public. We always wanted to represent that. The way I felt about it is, if everybody interacted the way some of our characters did, we’d probably all be a lot better off.”

Abbott said the show was able to delve into the political issues that overran the county during 2020’s presidential election because of their filming schedule.

“There were a lot of issues that were dealt with over the years, but not as much in the last season because we’re airing midseason,” he said. “We started producing at a time when we didn’t know who was going to win the election, so we had to veer away from a lot of things like current events that were changing every day.”

He added, “I believe the show will be remembered for having some political content, yes. But not so much where we’ve been in the last year and currently because we steered away from that for practical reasons.”

Last Man Standing will air it’s one hour finale special on May 20 at 9 p.m. ET on Fox.