Actress Kat Dennings has charmed audiences on the small and big screen since she was
a teen, but she's best known for her six-year run in a role that perfectly suited her comic
gifts and big personality: Max Black, the sarcastic and wisecracking diner waitress
and cupcake baker on CBS' 2 Broke Girls.
A huge role on a huge show, plus her prominent relationship with musician Josh Groban, kept
Dennings on the pop culture radar for years.
But then, she just kind of disappeared.
It feels like Hollywood won't cast Dennings anymore.
Why isn't she around as much as she used to be?
Not-so-broke girl
A steady gig means a steady paycheck, and the equivalent for actors is a lead role on
a network sitcom.
Not only did Dennings get a hefty paycheck each week for delivering withering put-downs
and saucy innuendo on 2 Broke Girls, she'll also reap the financial benefits of starring
on that hit sitcom forever.
2 Broke Girls was so successful during its initial season that in 2012, producers sold
the show's rerun package into syndication in what was, at the time, the most lucrative
deal ever.
For the right to air 2 Broke Girls reruns, TBS paid $1.7 million per episode.
With 138 episodes in all, that's hundreds of millions of dollars, and Dennings gets
a cut as both a star and producer.
Basically, if Kat Dennings hasn't worked much lately, it's because she hasn't had to.
No more Thor
Getting cast in a Marvel movie can launch an actor to superstardom and earn them plenty
of follow-up gigs, but only if your character is one fans want to stick around.
Case in point: Kat Dennings.
She portrayed Darcy Lewis in Thor and Thor: The Dark World.
"Hammer!
Hammer!"
"Yeah, we can tell you're hammered.
It's pretty obvious."
Darcy is the assistant, intern, and friend to Natalie Portman's Dr. Jane Foster, but
she's nowhere to be seen in Thor: Ragnarok or the Avengers movies.
Cinemablend asked Ragnarok screenwriter Eric Pearson if he had even considered including
Darcy, and he said he hadn't.
So it looks like her time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — and all that comes with it — could
be over.
Big breakup
In 2014, Beth Behrs set up her 2 Broke Girls co-star with the deep-voiced pop-opera singer
Josh Groban.
"She always talked about how great he is and they've been friends for years, and she thought
we were both, you know, nerds.
She was right!"
Shortly thereafter they made the relationship official by appearing together at a charity
event.
Dennings and Groban were together until 2016, when, just before the final season of 2 Broke
Girls hit the air, the duo split.
A source told E! News that the breakup was "mutual," and that "they are still friends"
and all that other stuff couples say when they call it quits.
Dennings hasn't been linked to anyone since, so maybe she's spending some time just being
on her own and possibly tending to a broken heart.
Voice work
It may seem like she's MIA, but listen closely, and you'll spot Dennings' unique voice in
lots of stuff.
In a futuristic sequence on a December 2017 episode of The Simpsons, Dennings played Valerie,
Lisa''s Harvard roommate and a fellow jazz aficionado.
She also voices Leah on Netflix's puberty comedy Big Mouth.
Along with John Cena, Dennings also stars as Dallas in the upcoming YouTube Red animated
series Dallas and Robo, which is about a space trucker and her "warrior-poet" companion,
Robo.
A look ahead
Dennings has been gone for a while, but if all goes according to plan, she's about to
come back in a big way with a show about, oddly enough, comebacks.
In November 2017, Dennings was cast in a Hulu pilot called Dollface.
Dennings plays a woman who gets dumped by her boyfriend of many years, forcing her to
reestablish all the friendships she abandoned along the way.
Like Dennings's old show, Dollface explores the joys, pains, and complexities of female
friendships.
But unlike Dennings' old show, it's on a streaming service and it's a single-camera and laugh-track-free
joint.
Veep producer and occasional director Stephanie Laing shot the pilot, and Margot Robbie is
producing, so Dollface looks to have the solid pedigree necessary to return Kat Dennings
to the top of the TV pack.
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