Playing Tim “the tool man” Taylor on the sitcom Home Improvement is arguably one of Tim Allen’s most iconic roles of all time. He was the ultimate family man on the popular ABC show and along with the rest of the cast managed to make it a timeless classic. It’s crazy to think that after eight successful seasons, the network actually considered killing off Patricia Richardson’s character Jill Taylor, one of the most beloved leading ladies on network television at the time.
Now, this was actually because, in real life, Richardson had grown tired of the show. She had been on the series for years, becoming a four-time Emmy Award nominee as well as earning two Golden Globe nominations for the role. Even though Home Improvement was still a success, Richardson was just over being a sitcom mom. ABC went to Tim Allen and suggested killing Jill off so that the show could continue. A natural suggestion considering Allen had no interest in ending the series any time soon. He adamantly refused to kill off his co-star and ultimately decided to just end the show after its eighth season.
Allen and Richardson reunited on Allen’s next big comedy series, Last Man Standing, but she told Entertainment Tonight that she was still worried that the stand-up star had “never really forgiven me for not wanting to do the ninth year.”
“He loved Tim Taylor,” she explained. “Tim Taylor was this happily married man with his great boys and great life, and so he wanted that show to go on forever.”
Though Jill Taylor will always be the role we best remember Patricia Richardson for, the Bethesda, Maryland native has appeared in countless other shows over the years including Double Trouble, The Cosby Show, Equalizer, Eisenhower and Lutz, Strong Medicine, The West Wing, Blindspot, the Lifetime film Sophie & the Moonhanger, and TV movie Undue Influence. She’s also starred in numerous Broadway productions over the years like Gypsy: A Musical Fable. Richardson currently serves as the president of the Los Angeles SAG-AFTRA board which her former co-star Jonathan Taylor Thomas also serves on.
