Home Improvement star Richard Karn spills show secrets
MORE than 15 years later, Home Improvement star Richard Karn has opened up about what life was really like as Al Borland on the ’90s sitcom.
HOME Improvement star Richard Karn has opened up about what life was really like as Al Borland on the ’90s sitcom.
Now 60-years-old, Karn spoke to news.com.au about how he landed his role on the show that ran for eight seasons, what Tim Allen’s really like and what he’s up to now.
GETTING THE GIG
Karn wasn’t the first choice to play Tim’s sidekick on the fictional show within the show, Tool Time. In fact, he only got an audition for Home Improvement because he had met the show’s producers a decade earlier.
“Fast forward years later and when I found out they were having auditions for Home Improvement, I called them up,” Karn said.
“They said the whole show was already cast and there really wasn’t anything in there for me. They didn’t think I was right for the role of Al because they originally wanted someone who was much taller and older than Tim. They wanted that diversity between the two characters and they felt like I was too much like Tim.”
Karn was invited to come and audition for the show in case they could find a role for him in the future.
They asked him to act out as a scene as Al Borland (who was originally going to be called Glen) and then Karn got lucky.
“I got a call about two or three weeks later from the casting director asking if I still had my beard,” Karn said.
“He said that the actor (who had been cast as Glen/Al) by the name of Stephen Tobolowsky got a movie and couldn’t do the pilot. Because they knew me, they hoped that I would be OK with just doing the pilot and if the show got picked up, they would bring Stephen back for the series.”
But Karn was so impressive in the pilot that they decided the gig was his, permanently.
SACKED AFTER THREE DAYS
Patricia Richardson played Tim’s wife, Jill Taylor, but like Karn she wasn’t the first choice for that role.
“At the very beginning, the role of Jill was going to be played by Frances Fisher,” Karn said.
But after just three days of rehearsals, the writers changed their minds.
“Frances is a great actress, but in this role with Tim, she came off more as a victim to him than his equal,” Karn said.
“I didn’t quite understand that until they brought Pat (Patricia Richardson) in and after the first read-through it was a very different thing going on with the same words. Pat was way more of an equal to Tim.”
SIGNATURE MOVE
When most people think about Al Borland, they think of two things.
His catchphrase: “I don’t think so Tim,” and his signature move: A salute to the audience at the start of each Tool Time episode.
So who came up with the salute?
“When we had a studio audience for the first time, it was odd because I walked out there and saw all these people and I felt like I should do something,” Karn said.
“It wasn’t anything I had planned. I just did a little salute. I don’t know why I did it. And then all of a sudden it was the in the script the next week and every week after that.”
SUDDENLY FAMOUS
When the show first aired in 1991, Karn said he “didn’t really understand how it would change my life”.
But after the show gained traction, he realised he couldn’t go about life as normal anymore.
“My wife and I managed an apartment building for our day jobs and it got to the point where we had someone call up and say, ‘Hey we’ve got a leak in our sink. Can you please come and take a look?’
“I went down there and there’d be like 15 of their friends sitting there and they’d say, ‘See, Al is our super [building superintendent].’ That kind of hit me and I thought, maybe it’s time to give up the day job.”
THE REAL TIM ALLEN
As Tim Taylor’s sidekick, Karn spent most of his time on and off the set hanging out with Tim Allen, who he said is not that similar to the character he played on the show.
“Tim’s a little more serious in life,” Karn said.
“Recently he’s gotten very political. In his latest TV show, Last Man Standing, he plays this very staunch republican with all these Democrats around him and that’s kind of how Tim is now. He’s very much a Fox News kind of guy.”
Tim Allen’s also a very generous guy, according to Karn.
“Tim gave us interesting presents for Christmas each year. He once had bikes made for everybody with the Binford logo on them. And then he also gave us Rolex watches one year. Christmas was always a lot of fun thanks to Tim.”
MOBBED BY AUSSIES
Through playing Al Borland, Karn was hired by different companies around the world to promote different products.
“I got to go to Australia a couple of times,” he said.
“I did some things with Black & Decker. I went to one of the national championships of football (AFL) and they gave me these giant bodyguards. I don’t really need bodyguards because people are really nice to me.
“After the game, some fans picked me up and started running off with me in celebration and the bodyguards were laughing but my wife wasn’t. She was yelling, ‘Get him! They’re taking him away! Get him!’”
PULLING THE PIN TOO EARLY
Home Improvement ended after eight seasons in 1999, but Richard Karn would have loved for the show to keep going.
“It wasn’t really up to me,” Karn said about a potential ninth season.
“Tim was ready to go. He really wanted to do other things and at that point it was also when Michael Jordan was leaving the NBA. Jordan made a big thing about wanting to go out on top and Home Improvement was the number one show on ABC when we left.”
Despite Tim Allen being offered a rumoured $US50 million to agree to one more season, he pulled the pin.
“I think immediately Tim regretted that,” Karn said.
“Sometimes you get in a kind of tunnel vision of life when you’re doing this and you don’t realise how wonderful the situation is until you’re outside looking back.”
DON’T BLAME JTT
Jonathan Taylor Thomas, who played Randy, left the show in 1998 to go and study abroad.
Disillusioned with show business, the young star upset both Tim Allen and Patricia Richardson when he refused to appear in the show’s finale a year later.
“Tim felt very father-like to the kids and I think it hurt his feelings that Jonathan didn’t show up,” Karn said about the finale.
“Jonathan’s life at that point wasn’t necessarily all his own life though. His mum was also deciding what he should or shouldn’t do. That comes down to a particular parental guidance idea that she had. I think Jonathan really would have rather done the episode. I don’t think he was holding out because he was mad at anybody.”
LIFE AFTER HOME IMPROVEMENT
“It was like graduating from school,” Karn said about life after the show ended.
“All of a sudden I didn’t have a routine.”
Karn immersed himself in looking for work and in 2002 he landed a role hosting Family Feud.
“It came out of left field but I really enjoyed doing it,” he said.
Recently Karn has been working in theatre and has done six or seven plays in last few years, in addition to a few movie and TV appearances.
And yes, he still gets an occasional cheque in the mail from Home Improvement.
“Every time the show gets bought around the world ... you get a little percentage of that,” Karn said.
“You don’t want to have to live on that but it’s a nice kind of annuity.”
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