Despite decades of playing St. Nick across The Santa Clause trilogy and its follow-up Disney+ series, actor Tim Allen is sorely lacking in the jolly department, according to his one-time co-star Casey Wilson.
On a recent episode of her Bitch Sesh podcast, Wilson recounted how working alongside Allen on an episode of The Santa Clauses was “the truly single worst experience I’ve ever had with a co-star ever,” as reported by Variety. She guest starred in the pilot, an episode of television titled “Good to Ho” that aired in November 2022. Wilson played the grown-up version of a kid character from the original 1994 film. “Tim Allen was such a bitch,” Wilson said on the podcast, saying that she had previously “buried this” story because a producer on the series is “a great friend” and because her kids “loved the movies.”
The actor then broke down the scene she filmed with Allen, in which her character begins throwing things at his Santa, thinking he’s a burglar. “[He] goes over to the producer who is standing four feet from me and goes, and I hear him, he goes, ‘You gotta tell her to stop stepping on my lines,’” Wilson said. “The producer turns to me with horror on his face and has to walk one foot to me and he goes, ‘Um, Tim would ask that you stop stepping on his lines.’”
Wilson added that “everybody was walking on egg shells” around Allen on set, and “people just looked frantic… When he was done, he was so fucking rude. Never made eye contact, never said anything. It was so uncomfortable.”
Allen serves as star and executive producer on The Santa Clauses, a streaming continuation of the beloved Disney trilogy—1994’s The Santa Clause, 2002’s The Santa Clause 2, and 2006’s The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause. Two seasons of the show are available on Disney+; there’s no word on a third season just yet.
After Wilson completed one shot of her close-up coverage, she said, Allen promptly left the set without alerting his fellow co-stars or crew members. “It’s the end, and Tim Allen goes, ‘Leaving!,’ takes his Santa cape, picks it up and drops it on the floor and walks out,” she said. “And they hustle in his stand-in; lovely man, who was much nicer to act against. People are scurrying to pick up his velvet Santa coat. He’s a bitch. And this is the best… I will not say who said this. This was someone that I do not know, perhaps in the crew. [He or she] breezes past me and just goes, ‘You’re seeing him on a good day.’”
This isn’t the first time Allen has found himself on the naughty list for alleged on-set misconduct. In January of this year, his Home Improvement co-star Pamela Anderson alleged in her memoir that on the first day she filmed the ABC sitcom, Allen “opened his robe and flashed me quickly—completely naked underneath. He said it was only fair, because he had seen me naked. Now we’re even. I laughed uncomfortably.” In an email to Vanity Fair at the time, Allen denied the allegation via his publicist, saying, “No, it never happened. I would never do such a thing.”
VF has reached out to reps for Allen and the Disney+ series for comment.