Kat Dennings Recalls Casting Directors Calling Her ‘Fat’ When She was 12

In a new interview with PEOPLE, Dennings said that over the course of her decades-long career, she’s heard a number of discouraging comments about her looks. She also shared how she learned to brush off those critiques as a young age and prove the doubters wrong.

“The time that I was auditioning and starting to act, it was a very different environment than it is now,” she recalled, “There was not a lot of inclusivity at all. It was very harsh. There was a lot of extremely negative feedback and people would not hold back.”

The 2 Broke Girls alum says casting directors were often “very cruel,” even when they were “talking about a child.”

“It was pretty crazy thinking about it. I’m like, ‘How can anyone say that about a little kid? This is insane,'” she said. “For example, I was 12. I’d go into an audition and I’d do it, and my manager would call me and I’d be like, ‘How’d it go?’ And they’d be like, ‘Well, they thought you weren’t pretty enough and you’re fat.'”

The 38-year-old actress admitted that at the time, she had a “very strong” outlook on the negative feedback she’d receive from casting directors. But instead of taking their words to heart, Dennings chose to believe their judgements were wrong.

“That was my attitude. For some reason, it didn’t break my spirit. I was like, ‘I’ll show them,'” she quipped. “I guess props to my parents, because they were like, ‘They’re idiots. Don’t listen to them.’ And I was like, ‘They’re idiots, I’m not.'”

Though Dennings said the entertainment business was “completely insane” back then, she thinks the climate has changed, calling the environment in Hollywood these days “much softer, kinder” and more understanding.

“There’s body positivity, there’s inclusivity, there’s representation, and there was none of that before. It was really gross,” she added.

Dennings applied that same attitude while manifesting her latest role — starring opposite Tim Allen in the ABC sitcom Shifting Gears.

“I was like, ‘God, I don’t know what I want to do. I am just feeling so crazy,'” she recalled of that “dark” time in-between jobs.

It wasn’t until a friend suggested she think about what her “dream job” looked like that she realized she wanted to do another multi-cam sitcom.

“Then the next day I got this call to do this show. So it felt like I wished for something and I got it. It just felt like a meant-to-be thing,” Dennings continued, telling PEOPLE that working alongside a “cultural mainstay” like Allen was a no-brainer.

“He’s Santa Claus [in The Santa Clause films] and Buzz Lightyear [in the Toy Story franchise]. He’s a big part of my consciousness growing up, so it was very surreal to work with him, but in a great way, because he’s a very kind person,” she added of working with the actor.

Catch Dennings on Shifting Gears airing Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET on ABC.