Patricia Richardson Reveals 'Home Improvement' Pay & Why the Show Ended
Patricia Richardson is talking Home Improvement.
The actress, who starred as 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, via the Los Angeles Times.
“I told everybody, ‘There’s not enough money in the world to get me to do a ninth year,’” she revealed. “This show is over. It needs to end.”
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She says that ABC offered her $1 million per episode and Tim $2 million per episode to get them to return for a 25-episode Season 9. While she said Tim was onboard with the deal, she wasn’t interested because she wanted to spend more time with her family following her divorce from Ray Baker.
She went back to the network with her own pitch, which was to pay her the same amount as Tim and give her an executive producer credit on the show, which ABC had also reportedly offered him.
“I knew that Disney would in no way pay me that much,” she explained. “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.”
“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.”
The two later reunited on his series Last Man Standing. And while they are no longer in contact, she said she’s “never stopped loving working with him.”