October 14, 2025
Jimmy Kimmel Live!/YouTube
'Shifting Gears' star Kat Dennings discusses one of her earliest acting roles – a bedwetter – during her appearance Monday on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!'
Long before Kat Dennings came to star on "Shifting Gears," she appeared in a regional commercial for a bedwetting medication.
Jimmy Kimmel played the ad Monday night during Dennings' appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," saying his team dug into the archives to uncover the 1990s commercial. It features Dennings as a preteen who had overcome bedwetting.
Despite the embarrassing topic, Dennings, 39, said she was excited to be on the shoot at the time, and that she didn't have fears about it being seen by her peers.
"I had goals, I really wanted to be an actor really badly," the Bryn Mawr native said. "This was a three-day shoot, it was a serious production."
The actress, who was 11, said she developed a crush on her co-star, a 12-year-old boy. She didn't reveal his name, but said that he became her first date.
Dennings started acting at 9, and later moved to Los Angeles as a teenager. But she told Kimmel that she was an extremely serious child while growing up in Montgomery County, and was "a little girl with the spirit of an elderly man." Dennings credited this to her father, who she said was an older parent.
"I wanted to be involved in discussions with adults and I wanted them to take me seriously and I liked talking about current events and stuff," Dennings said.
As a result, Dennings said she liked listening to talk radio and made it on the airwaves at age 6 to talk about the importance of wearing seatbelts. However, she was upset that her comments weren't taken very seriously.
Watch the full clip, including the commercial, below:
