‘Last Man Standing’ Stars Tim Allen and Nancy Travis Address Omission of Trump Mentions

Last Man Standing stars Tim Allen and Nancy Travis opened up about the show steering clear from mentioning President Donald Trump during its revived season seven.

In a new interview, the actors clarified that the show is not consciously removing Trump’s name from scripts — it just hasn’t come up.

“It just hadn’t come up in the script,” Allen said after E! News asked whether or not the show would not mention the president.

“I don’t know that it was a dictate handed down that we were not going to mention Trump,” Travis said. “We are a show about a family the has different viewpoints, and that family still manages to find their way to each other and be a family.”

She added: “I think if you set out and create a ‘political’ show then you’re creating a political show, you’re not creating a sitcom…”

“It couldn’t last too long either, because once the politics go out, the show doesn’t have many legs,” Allen said. “I remember in my previous show [Home Improvement] we didn’t do much topical stuff. Here it was fun to do the topical stuff, cause it seemed to get so much traction to annoy the Barack Obama followers.”

“They didn’t like that,” he added. “It was nice to have a point of view… we do a lot of stuff to insight friction. Cause then drama comes out of friction and comedy — for us at least — you gotta have some story to make things funny, but it isn’t just a freak show [about politics].”

“It’s much more deeper than that,” Travis said.

Travis and Allen’s comments come as showrunner Kevin Abbot told press recently that the show would intentionally not name Trump in future episodes of the show.

“Yeah. We want to appeal to everybody and that’s a polarizing thing,” he said. “We want to talk about things but we don’t want to be a trigger that immediately thrills or turns off people. The news cycle changes so rapidly I don’t think we’re going to deal with anything immediately topical because by the time we air it will no longer be pertinent.”

The series will continue have its topical roots in its own way but it will not attempt to be up to date with day-to-day politics.

“We’ll deal with the larger issues. We want to take a more universal tone and unite rather than divide in these times,” he explained. “We rather show people on either side of the political spectrum arguing with each other but remaining family.”

Last Man Standing airs Friday at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.