Decades after we first met the Taylor family, it's impossible to picture Tim Allen's overambitious
handyman-slash-TV-host Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor married to anyone but his smart, cool,
vest-wearing wife Jill, played by Patricia Richardson. Years after the show's end in
May 1999, Richardson recalled that the pair's chemistry on the show was instantly clear,
telling HuffPostLive,
"Tim was so hilarious and we just clicked right away. It was a really fast five or six
days [when] we did the pilot."
Even after the Home Improvement series finale, the actress found it weird watching her co-star
with his other on-screen wives. Richardson once joked,
"Whenever I see him with other people I think, 'Well, he was mine first.'"
Bolstered by an actress with whom he had a natural rapport, Allen captivated audiences
on Home Improvement, which served as his big Hollywood break, propelling him from stand-up
comedian to the lead of the Christmas classic The Santa Clause in 1994. He went on to voice
Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story a year after that, all while continuing to film the sitcom. Richardson
became beloved amongst viewers of the time, and maintains a steady career to this day.
All this considered, one might assume that Allen and Richardson were the obvious perfect
TV couple match from the get-go. But the truth is that Richardson wasn't Tim Taylor's first
on-screen wife. Before ABC executives begged her to play Jill, they actually cast someone
else in the role.
On paper, ABC's first pick for Jill seemed sound. The first version of the Home Improvement
pilot starred dramatic actress Frances Fisher as the Taylor family matriarch. At the time,
Fisher's most famous on-screen role was her five-year stint as Detective Deborah Saxon
in ABC's long-running crime drama soap opera The Edge of Night.
Off screen, for a time, she was best known in the headlines as Clint Eastwood's girlfriend.
Fisher dated the actor-turned-director for almost six years after meeting him on the
set of the film Pink Cadillac in 1989, in which she had a small part.
Despite Fisher's stellar dramatic record, her talents didn't quite translate to the
boisterous jokes of Home Improvement. Richard Karn, who played Tim's long-suffering Tool
Time co-presenter Al Borland, said the Home Improvement writers changed their minds about
Fisher just three days into rehearsals. After the pilot didn't fly with audiences, the creative
team scrambled to replace Fisher with a different star. Karn recalled,
"Frances is a great actress, but in this role with Tim, she came off more as a victim to
him than his equal."
"I feel like I've gone through so many things. I don't know how to explain it."
And former Walt Disney Television President Dean Valentine told the Archive of American
Television that Fisher's comedic skills simply weren't up to the task of competing with Allen.
"She's really, she's a wonderful actress, but she's not really as funny as he is."
Fisher probably isn't dwelling too much on losing the part. She's had a brilliant career
on the small screen since, appearing on episodes of top-rated TV shows like The X-Files, ER,
Grey's Anatomy, and Fargo. Perhaps most famously, she played Rose's icy mother Ruth in the 1997
blockbuster Titanic.
After changing their minds about Fisher, ABC executives almost failed to convince Patricia
Richardson to take over. At the time, she'd just given birth to twins and already had
a six-year-old at home, and she was supposed to go back to work on a different show for
the network in nine months' time. When Richardson got the call to say she'd been cast on Home
Improvement instead, she resisted. She later told HuffPostLive,
"I had never heard of Tim and I didn't know anything about it."
Richardson told the network brass they would have to wait for her to breastfeed her twins
during filming, and they agreed. But what finally convinced her was that the producers
had worked on her favorite show: Roseanne. Meanwhile, Richardson's husband at the time,
actor Ray Baker, immediately saw the potential. He reportedly told her, "This is the show
you're going to do for seven years." Actually, it turned out to be eight.
Richardson returned for the eighth and final season of Home Improvement because she'd promised
the crew she would, but was determined to leave after that. She's very clear on why
Home Improvement was cancelled after Season 8: She and Allen didn't want to stay on for
another season, no matter how much money ABC was willing to pay. Additionally, some of
the show's key voices weren't returning for a potential ninth season, including some long-time
writers, and Richardson felt the show was going to suffer as a result. Plus, as she
said, she was burned out from working long days, including in the writers' room. She
told HuffPostLive,
"I really just felt like I need to get out of this show and have a life again and see
my children and maybe have a date, because I had gotten divorced halfway through."
Richardson contributed so much to the sitcom, but after a long and wildly successful run,
it was time to move on, and to make a few "home improvements" of her own.
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