Patricia Richardson's 'Home Improvement' Costar Says She Quit the Show Because She Was Tired of 'Fighting' With the Writers

The set of Home Improvement wasn’t always as calm as the popular 1990s sitcom would have you believe.

In fact, the youngest member of the Taylor family said that the tension was what led to co-lead Patricia Richardson walking away from a $1-million-per-episode payday.

Taran Noah Smith, now 42, was only 7 in 1991 when he was cast as Mark Taylor, the youngest member of Tim and Jill Taylor’s family. Tim Allen shot to stardom as home improvement TV show host Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor, and Richardson became a star in her own right as Jill, the practical and empathetic housewife forever navigating the sea of her husband’s brand of masculinity.

His comments came on the "Outgrown," podcast, hosted by Tom Scharpling and Julia Vickerman.

Though Allen was the lead star, Richardson played a big part in the show’s success as the practical but always amused wife. Her refusal to return for a ninth season was a big reason the sitcom came to an end.

Zachery Ty Bryan and Jonathan Taylor Thomas filled out the Home Improvement family cast as older brothers Brad and Randy. The show enjoyed great success and ultimately recorded 204 episodes.

According to Smith, Richardson was a late addition to the cast. Frances Fisher was originally cast, but producers decided her dramatic background didn’t suit the show’s lighter tone, so Richardson was cast days before recording the pilot.

"When they brought Patricia in, there was just a much better chemistry," he said. "And she had her own kid. She had just given birth to twins, and she had one older kid who was about my age. She really brought a lot more of a realistic mom energy to her, and she fought throughout the whole show to keep the show more realistic."

"She would tell the writers, ‘A mother would never say this,’ and get them to change it," he added.

Unfortunately, according to Smith, a change in producers after the first few seasons created a stressful environment.

"The original creators only did the first couple seasons, and then they moved on, and they brought in a whole other group of writer/producers," he told “Outgrown.”

"Those guys, very few of them had kids, and the show kind of started to go in a different direction, at least the scripts we'd get on Monday," he recalled. "It was really Pat, the mom, who fought the good fight to make it more realistic because oftentimes it would just be something that was very out of character just to sell a joke, just to set up a joke. It's like, 'Wait, this is not what the characters are about.'"

Ultimately, Richardson chose to walk away from the role that earned her four Emmy nominations.

“She was just tired of it, of having to fight to make it realistic all the time," Smith spilled. "And Tim was getting far more money than she was. That was her actual way of stopping. She said she'd do a ninth season if she got paid the same amount as Tim, knowing they wouldn't do it."