The “Home Improvement” pilot was in crisis. As rehearsals got underway on the would-be ABC sitcom in 1991, it became apparent that the central tension between Tim Allen and Frances Fisher, who had been cast as Jill Taylor, the wife of Allen’s character, Tim Taylor, was all wrong. The show had been built around 37-year-old Allen’s particular brand of machismo stand-up comedy and, opposite his grunts and jabs, Fisher’s comebacks were sounding more like pleas.
A test audience watched a run-through of their battle-of-the-sexes repartee in silence. “Frances is a very good actress, and her character was upset,” said “Home Improvement” co-creator and executive producer Carmen Finestra. “But the audience was thinking, ‘This guy is a brute.
’ You’re not going to feel very sympathetic toward the male character if you feel like he’s abusive.” Enter Patricia Richardson. The 40-year-old actress was under contract with Disney — which co-produced “Home Improvement” under its former Touchstone Television banner — on a different pilot, and the executives suggested trying her in the role instead.
Armed with a stash of withering glares, a no-nonsense Texas twang and a gift for physical comedy, Richardson stood toe-to-toe with Allen when she arrived two days before filming was scheduled to begin. “Pat made it the comedy that we hoped it would be,” Finestra said. “It was unbelievable what she did.
I mean, it made the show work.” With Richardson as Jill.
