Patricia Richardson says ‘Home Improvement’ ended because of pay gap

Patricia Richardson says no amount of TLC — Total Likewise Cash — could have saved Home Improvement. 

The actress, who starred as family matriarch Jill Taylor on the hit ABC sitcom, revealed that she used the large pay disparity between her and her costar Tim Allen to get out of having to shoot another season.

“I told everybody, ‘There’s not enough money in the world to get me to do a ninth year,'” she recalled in a new interview with Los Angeles Times. “This show is over. It needs to end.”

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Just months before production on the eighth season was set to end, Richardson claimed that ABC offered her $1 million per episode and Allen $2 million per episode to get the pair to return for a 25-episode ninth season. While she alleged that Allen was onboard with the deal, Richardson wasn’t interested because she wanted to spend more time with her family in the wake of her divorce from Ray Baker.

So, she claimed, she went back to the network with her own pitch: pay her the same amount as Allen and give her an executive producer credit on the show — which ABC had also reportedly offered her costar — and only then would she sign on for another season. She offered the proposal well aware that it was doomed from the get-go. 

“I knew that Disney would in no way pay me that much,” she told the Times. “That was my way to say ‘no’ and was a little bit of a flip-off to Disney. I’d been there all this time, and they never even paid me a third of what Tim was making, and I was working my ass off. I was a big reason why women were watching.”

ABC rejected her proposal, Richardson said, and thus the show ended after its eighth season in 1999.

Her decision led to conflict between her and Allen. “I was mad at Tim because he was leaving me alone being the only person saying no, which made me feel terrible and like the bad guy,” she recalled, “and he was upset with me for leaving.”

A representative for Allen declined Entertainment Weekly’s request for comment. However, Home Improvement co-creator and executive producer Carmen Finestra told the Times that he couldn’t “remember one discussion” about continuing the show without Richardson, noting, “It just couldn’t have worked.”

Executive producer Elliot Shoenman added, “Without her, it just didn’t make any sense.”

Richardson and Allen later reunited on his series Last Man Standing. While the pair are no longer in contact, she said she’s “never stopped loving working with him.”