Golden Globe winner Tim Allen blamed his onscreen Taylor family for causing real-life problems with a potential Home Improvement reboot.
Allen, 72, who has mulled a reboot of his hit ABC sitcom for years, said the former child actors who played his sons are the culprits.
“They keep talking about how it could move forward, but they get stuck,” he said in an interview with US Weekly on Wednesday. “There are some personality problems right now with the boys.”
“They’ve got their own issues,” the TV dad added. “I always thought it would be cool if it was a story about them. That’s a little challenging right now, to put it mildly.”
The “personality problems” the actor is referring to largely stem from former child star Zachery Ty Bryan, who played his eldest son, Brad, on the show from 1991–1999.
Bryan, 44, was arrested in November for the sixth time in five years. He was brought in for allegedly violating his probation related to a previous domestic violence conviction involving his fiancée, Johnnie Faye Cartwright, with whom he shares three of his seven children.
The actor, who has just one acting credit since 2009, was previously arrested for felony assault, robbery, and suspicion of DUI. In 2020, he was brought in on charges of felony strangulation alongside misdemeanor charges of fourth-degree assault after an argument with Cartwright turned aggressive.
Neither Jonathan Taylor Thomas, who played Bryan’s younger brother Randy, nor Taran Noah Smith, who played the family’s youngest son, has acted professionally in over a decade.
In 2022, Patricia Robinson, who played Jill, the matriarch of Home Improvement’s Taylor family, said Thomas was “not really interested in acting.”
She said that Smith, 42, is “not an actor anymore.”
“I called Jonathan one day, I said, ‘Has he asked you about this?’” she recalled. “And he went, ‘No, why is he going around telling everybody that we’re all on board when he hasn’t talked to you or me. I think that’s weird.’”
Tim Allen and Patricia Richardson, the stars of Home Improvement, in 1995.
ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty ImagesDespite the hiccups with Home Improvement, Allen has found great satisfaction in continuing his other iconic franchise: Toy Story. Allen, who voices Buzz Lightyear, said being a part of such an iconic franchise brings him back to his own childhood.
“What these characters have done for them is what Mickey and Donald Duck did for me at a certain time in my life,” he said.
He’s now hoping to expand Buzz’s story even further.
“I always thought it would be interesting if Buzz realizes where he was built,” he said. “I love the indication that all of us can reinvent ourselves.”
