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Patricia Richardson says ‘Home Improvement’ ended over Tim Allen pay gap

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Patricia Richardson says ‘Home Improvement’ ended over Tim Allen pay gap

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One of the biggest sitcoms of the 1990s might have continued for one more season had star Patricia Richardson received a pay improvement.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times published Friday, the 73-year-old actress, who starred as Jill Taylor on “Home Improvement,” revealed the sitcom ended after ABC turned down her request to be paid as much as her co-star Tim Allen.

Richardson told the newspaper that during production of Season 8, she decided she didn’t want to continue with the show for several reasons, including her desire to spend more time with her children. But ABC offered her $1 million an episode to return for a ninth season, while Allen would be paid $2 million, she said.

Although Allen reportedly accepted this offer, Richardson had no interest. “I told everybody, there’s not enough money in the world to get me to do a ninth year,” she said. “This show is over. It needs to end.” So according to the actress, she asked ABC to give her the same deal Allen was reportdly offered: $2 million an episode and an executive producer credit. But she was certain the network would say no, and she was right.

“I knew that Disney would in no way pay me that much,” she recalled to 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 (expletive) off. I was a big reason why women were watching.”

Prior to this, Richardson said she was denied a producer credit on the show despite having creative input on her character and episodes. Allen, meanwhile, became an executive producer in Season 6.

USA TODAY has reached out to representatives for Allen and ABC for comment.

Patricia Richardson says doing ‘Home Improvement’ reboot ‘would be very weird’

“Home Improvement” ultimately ended in May 1999 after eight seasons on ABC, during which time it was one of the decade’s most popular sitcoms. While filming the series finale, Richardson told the Times that she was “mad at” Allen because he “was leaving me alone being the only person saying no, which made me feel terrible and like the bad guy, and he was upset with me for leaving.” She added that she and Allen don’t keep in touch today.

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In March, Richardson said on the “Back to the Best” podcast that she isn’t interested in a potential “Home Improvement” reboot and found it “weird” to see Allen publicly discussing the possibility.

“I would hear (Tim) was coming out publicly and saying this stuff about how everyone was on board to do a ‘Home Improvement’ reunion,” she recalled. “But he never asked me, and he never asked Jonathan (Taylor Thomas), who I talk to. So, I called Jonathan one day and said, ‘Has he asked you about this? And he went, ‘No, and why’s he going around telling everybody that we’re all on board when he hasn’t talked to you or me?'”

She added, “It’s not gonna be the show, at all. And people think we can just magically go right back to who we were 30 years ago and do a show that was 30 years ago, and we’ve all changed quite a bit, I think, since then. It would be very weird.”

Contributing: Edward Segarra, USA TODAY

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