Kat Dennings recalls the woodlands of Bryn Mawr

KAT DENNINGS, who plays the smart-mouthed waitress you've probably already seen in promos for CBS' new sitcom "2 Broke Girls," knows how to paint a picture.

The 25-year-old star of "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" got her big break as a young teen when she appeared on HBO's "Sex and the City" as the infamous bat mitzvah girl in "Hot Child in the City."

"It changed my life. Really, it did. I was a homeschooled kid living in the forest, and I didn't even have cable," Dennings recalled, noting that her family "had to get cable to watch that episode. So all my little homeschool friends and their moms saw Kyle MacLachlan's ass. It was pretty incredible."

And the forest?

That was in Bryn Mawr, that wilderness on Philadelphia's Main Line.

Dennings, who was born Katherine Litwack and moved with her family to the West Coast a couple of years after her "SATC" debut, explained to me afterward what she'd meant by "forest."

"I know, it seems weird," she said. "It really was on a hill in the woods, and I was very small, so it seemed like a huge forest. It probably was just a hilly, wooded area. There was a horse farm at the bottom of the hill that's now built up [with] houses, so it doesn't seem like that anymore. But when I was living there, there were creeks and it was really secluded and amazing."

It also makes for a good story, as does the fact that former "SATC" producer Michael Patrick King - who's from Scranton - is producing "2 Broke Girls."

"Yes, she was an innocent woodland creature, magical and mysterious, like a sexy hobbit, when we discovered her," he joked.