Cast Feuds, Momager Fights & An Illicit Love Affair –– The 10 Most Shocking Secrets & Scandals From TV Favorite 'Home Improvement'

It's tool time! Cindy Bennici, former momager to Home Improvement star Taran Noah Smith, 31, penned a tell-all with her famous son's help about raising a child actor in Stardom Happens: Nurturing Your Child in the Entertainment Business— and she didn't hold back on set secrets of the hit '90s sitcom.

The show producers' choice was dependent on the mother they picked and her hair color. After initially choosing a blonde, Smith and "brothers" Zachery Ty Bryan and Jonathan Taylor Thomas were added to the cast. But while filming the pilot, they fired the woman and replaced her with Patricia Richardson— a brunette. "In all 201 episodes, they never addressed the genetic improbability of two brown-haired parents giving birth to three blond boys, but hey, that's show business!" Smith laughs now.

Bennici says she butt heads with Home Improvement producers when they failed to provide the child actors with a play area. The stars' parents suggested turning a portable bungalow into a recreation spot, which would keep the set quiet when the kids needed to let off some steam. "Sometimes you just have to think like a money man to make things happen," Bennici boasts.

Just like on TV, the Home Improvement brothers didn't always get along. "A group of three kids with two older and one younger is always going to be difficult," Bennici explains.

Playing Mark Taylor wasn't always easy— or safe! After Smith was tied up and locked in a closet as part of the Taylor boys' prank, he tripped and was unable to move his arms. "Everyone on the set was freaked until we found out he was okay," Bennici says.

According to his momager, Smith attempted to seek legal emancipation from his parents in order to work longer hours on set and cash in on his trust fund at just 16. But they refused, which "made our relationship with him quite strained," Bennici admits.

Bennici slams Leeza Gibbons and John Tesh, the hosts 1993 entertainment talk show John & Leeza, for asking the young actors about contract negotiations on air and creating a "nightmare." "As parents, we just had to sit in the green room and watch as our unprepared kids tried to dodge the question," she writes. Smith still holds a grudge against Gibbons and Tesh as well. He says he once spotted a defiled photo of the pair at an art show, and took action. The artist "painted onto the poster dark, oily creatures coming out of the smiling faces of the co-hosts," he recalls. "I bought the art, of course, and have displayed it often, so I consider us even!"

Bennici advises her readers, parents of child actors, to "be aware there ... 'sharks' and both can be male or female." These "sharks" prey on the young star in order to get close to their money, she says. Was Bennici speaking from personal experience? At just 17 years old, Smith married Heidi Van Pelt, a vegan chef 16 years his senior! Soon after, he accused his parents of squandering his trust fund.

Years later, Smith and his parents reconciled. "Thankfully, it's all over now, and an older and much wiser Taran is happily reunited with our family again," Bennici says, adding the problems began when "he met the wrong person," an obvious jab at Van Pelt.

Despite the drama in his earlier years, Smith says he has no regrets. "I can say without a doubt I have had a wonderful time and would do it over again the same way, mistakes and all," he writes.

Smith quit showbiz after the 1999 finale of his hit sitcom, and now works in disaster relief, his book bio states.