What Happened To The Mom From Home Improvement?
While Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor was arguably the biggest star of the '90s family sitcom "Home Improvement," the show wouldn't have been the same without his exasperated wife yelling "Tiiiiimmmm" nearly every episode. His wife, Jill Taylor, played by Patricia Richardson, clearly enjoyed her time on the show. "Tim and I were always cracking each other up," she told Closer Weekly. "We came up with so much of what you saw on the set every day." After nearly a decade on air, "Home Improvement" filmed its last episode in 1999.
And while the lovable Taylor family will forever remain a family stuck in '90s flannel in our minds, we can't help but wonder what Jill Taylor, (sorry, Patricia Richardson) has been doing since her "Home Improvement" days. While Richardson may have looked right at home on our television screens, she was never really comfortable with the time she had to spend away from her real-life children because of work. Sorry Brad, Randy, and Mark. We're sure she loved you boys, too.
Patricia Richardson repeatedly quit acting to be with her kids
Patricia Richardson has been forthcoming about why she didn't want to commit to doing another season of "Home Improvement," telling Closer Weekly, "I was a single [divorced] parent and away from my kids too much. I left the show, and I have put my children first since then. That's why I've kept quitting the business: to be with them."
For one who claims to keep quitting the business, Richardson sure does have a lot of hit shows on her resume. She went on to play supporting roles in two successful television series, "Strong Medicine" and "The West Wing."
While we may best remember Richardson sporting a slightly imperfect, chestnut-colored half-pony, these days, she's embracing the gray. "Ok here we have covid hair grow out. Just don't want to cut it! So.... new covid fashion raccoon hair," she captioned an Instagram pic in late 2020. It doesn't matter what you do to your hair mama Jill, (ugh sorry, Richardson!) We'll always remember you as the lovable '90s sitcom mom who was the perfect match for Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor.
She returned to the stage
Patricia Richardson is a fan favorite on the small screen after all these years, but she's made just as notable appearances in the theater. The 1974 revival of "Gypsy" was her Broadway debut, and her last theatrical role was that of Collard Darnell in the 1982 original production of "The Wake of Jamey Foster." Fast forward almost four decades and Richardson made her comeback to the boards as Mrs. Caldwell in the 2017 off-Broadway production of "Cruel Intentions: The Musical." The play was adapted from the 1999 movie "Cruel Intentions" starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Reese Witherspoon.
When speaking to Playbill a month after being cast, Richardson shared that she needed to dust off her vocal cords. "I'm re-learning to sing, or, actually, learning to sing for the first time. When I sang before, I just belted," she said. The actor noted that she hadn't sung professionally in years, so she enrolled in singing lessons to bring out her best voice. It was obviously worth it, as a HuffPost review praised the cast's singing, writing, "The vocals in the production were extraordinary."
Patricia Richardson defended her Home Improvement co-star Tim Allen
On "Home Improvement," Patricia Richardson was Tim Allen's on-screen wife who always backed him up in his endeavors. While the two weren't a couple in real life, Richardson made sure to stand by her colleague when Pamela Anderson accused him of indecency on set in her memoir, "Love, Pamela." According to Anderson, who played Lisa, the tool girl, for the first two seasons of "Home Improvement," Allen once flashed her in a hallway between takes. "He said it was only fair because he had seen me naked. 'Now we're even,' [said Allen]. I laughed uncomfortably," the former Playboy model wrote in the book, Variety reported.
Allen denied the incident ever happened in a statement to CNN, noting, "I would never do such a thing." Unfortunately for the actor, a clip of him seemingly flashing his on-screen wife resurfaced around the same time. In the video, he can be seen lifting up his kilt while facing Richardson, who makes a shocked face afterward. She quickly cleared the air and said it was not how it may have seemed.
"He was well dressed under there," Richardson told ET, explaining, "I was just shocked that he lifted the kilt, not by a man in boxer shorts." Anderson later told Variety that she was sure Allen had no ulterior motives and that he was just pushing the boundaries as a comic.