Where Are the Stars of ‘Home Improvement’ Now?
In news that will make all Home Improvement fans do their best Tim Allen grunt, the actor and comedian has reunited with Richard Karn, one of his costars from the hit ’90s sitcom, on History’s Assembly Required.
The show, which premiered February 23, focuses on builders at their home workshops as they try to breathe new life into everyday household items in need of fixing.
So now’s a good time — or “Tool Time,” as the case may be — to check in with Allen, Karn, and the rest of the Home Improvement cast to see what the stars have been up to since the ABC comedy left the air in 1999.
Tim Allen (Tim Taylor)
Allen went from one macho sitcom dad to another, starring on the ABC and now Fox comedy Last Man Standing as Mike Baxter, a father of three daughters who’s “trying to maintain his manliness,” per Fox. The actor, who won a Golden Globe for his Home Improvement performance, also went to infinity and beyond as the voice of Buzz Lightyear in Disney’s Toy Story series.
Patricia Richardson (Jill Taylor)
After Home Improvement, Richardson starred as Dr. Andy Campbell on the Lifetime medical drama Strong Medicine, recurred as campaign manager Sheila Brooks on The West Wing, and reunited with Allen for two episodes of Last Man Standing. More recently, she guest-starred in a 2019 episode of Blindspot and appeared in the Lifetime TV movie A Very Vintage Christmas later that year.
Taran Noah Smith (Mark Taylor)
Smith hasn’t “appeared” on screen since his 1999 voice role in the animated series Batman Beyond. When he turned 18, he and his then-partner Heidi Van Pelt started a vegan food company called Playfood in Kansas City, Missouri, according to the Marin Independent Journal. And in 2019, he was revealed to be the owner of a former Swedish naval submarine that popped up in Monterey Bay, California: He told SFGATE at the time that he was teaching people how to pilot the submarine and that his crew was “just all Californians having a good time.”
Jonathan Taylor Thomas (Randy Taylor)
Thomas, known as JTT to the Tiger Beat crowd, stopped acting regularly in 2006 after guest-starring gigs on Smallville, 8 Simple Rules, and Veronica Mars, though he did return to Hollywood to reunite with his Home Improvement parents in a 2015 episode of Last Man Standing. In 2017, Thomas was elected to the SAG-AFTRA Los Angeles board, with Richardson voted in as vice president.
Zachery Ty Bryan (Brad Taylor)
Bryan got steady guest-starring roles on TV until 2009, appearing in shows like Veronica Mars, Shark, and Burn Notice. He also hit the big screen in the films The Game of Their Lives and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. In October 2020, he was charged with two counts of menacing, two counts of assault in the fourth degree, coercion, felony strangulation, harassment, and interfering with making a report after allegedly strangling a woman, according to People, and the case seems to be ongoing.
Richard Karn (Al Borland)
In the years since Home Improvement, Karn has hosted Family Feud, appeared in the Air Bud film franchise, guest-starred on Last Man Standing, played a judge in two episodes of The Bold and the Beautiful, and refuted a report about his death on Twitter. He currently plays Fred Peters, a Steely Dan cover musician and the father of Maya, on the Hulu comedy PEN15.
Debbe Dunning (Heidi Keppert)
After starring in Home Improvement’s final two seasons, Dunning guested on the TV show Wicked Wicked Games. She currently hosts the Cowboy Channel’s Debbe Dunning’s Dude Ranch Round-Up, on which she “takes you across the U.S. and inside some of the best dude ranches around the country,” according to the network.
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