'Home Improvement' Star, 73, Looks Unrecognizable While Out in Los Angeles 25 Years Since Hit TV Sitcom Wrapped Up After 8 Seasons
Richardson looked much different from her days as Tim Allen's wife on Home Improvement.
Jan. 2 2025, Published 7:00 p.m. ET
Former Home Improvement star Patricia Richardson has been spotted looking unrecognizable while running errands.
The Emmy nominee, who recently revealed she torpedoed an extra season of the beloved sitcom over money differences, has been largely out of the spotlight since, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
The 73-year-old grabbed a bag and box of Diet Cokes as she left a CVS during her outing.
Cameras caught the 73-year-old outside a Los Angeles area CVS, picking up a few must-haves.
Richardson, who played wife to Tim Allen's Tim 'The Tool Man' Taylor on the ABC sitcom, dressed casually for the outing, wearing a simple black shirt under a plaid coat and a pair of blue jeans.
She had on matching sneakers, and tucked her bright-white hair under a black baseball cap.
A pair of large oval sunglasses covered her eyes.
Patricia Richardson had on a black jacket over a black shirt.
Richardson clutched a bag filled with necessities in one hand, and a12-pack of Diet Coke in the other. She mainly kept her head down and looked to be all business as she walked back to her car.
The white Toyota Rav4 SUV featured a large SMU sticker on the back window. The actress graduated from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas in 1972 with a degree in theater arts.
She used her degree as she played Jill Taylor on the hit ABC show from September 17, 1991, to May 25, 1999, with a total of 204 half-hour episodes spanning eight seasons.
A black ballcap and large oval sunglasses obscured her face.
Earlier this year, Richardson revealed her hit 90s TV series was canned by bigwigs after she demanded equal pay with leading man Allen.
The star claimed ABC and Disney wanted to run the show for a ninth season beyond 1999 but only offered her half of Allen's $2-million-per-episode for 25 additional chapters.
Richardson said she demanded equal pay with her on-screen husband – and the season was scuttled, costing her the $25million they original offered, according to The Globe.
The TV star was busy in Los Angeles while keeping it low-key.
Richardson reflected on her fight for equal treatment on the beloved sitcom in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
She said: "When I took the job, they said it wasn’t meant to be the Tim Allen show. It was meant to be our show."
The show's matriarch said that in the third season, she successfully negotiated her contract to secure four episodes that focused on her character, as well as a profit share that entitled her to a backend percentage of the show's earnings.
"I knew that residuals just get less and less, and I felt that I am going to end up being a huge part of whatever this show is," Richardson explained. "It’s going to work because of me almost as much as because of Tim."
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Richardson revealed she was the reason Home Improvement was canceled.
Richardson revealed both she and Allen agreed the show needed to end after its eighth season, however, the networks wanted to continue. So, Richardson proposed she be paid the same as Allen and be given an executive producer credit in order to sign on for another season.
"I knew that Disney would in no way pay me that much. That was my way to say ‘no’ and was a little bit of a flip-off to Disney," the actress recalled.
She added: "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."
