‘Home Improvement’s Richard Karn Is Still at Work & Set for a Tim Allen Reunion
You might Richard Karn best as Al Borland, the genial cohost of the fictional home-improvement TV show Tool Time on the very real TV show Home Improvement. But that hit ABC sitcom isn’t Karn’s only claim to fame.
The 69-year-old has actually been working as an actor and TV host since Home Improvement ended its run in 1999. And now he’s even headed for another onscreen reunion with former costar Tim Allen. Read on for details on that gig and other entries from Karn’s résumé.
Since Home Improvement’s end, Karn has been busy
After hanging up Al Borland’s tool belt, Karn continued acting, guest-starring on That ‘70s Show, Dirt, The Bold and the Beautiful, and Detroiters. He starred in the NBC web series CTRL and landed a recurring role in Pen15. He also hosted Family Feud between 2002 and 2006.
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In an interview with Woman’s World, Karn said his Family Feud gig “totally came out of left field.”
He explained, “I filmed the pilot of To Tell the Truth and was asked to be a panelist. I declined, but then the producers came back and asked if I would host one. At first, I was like, ‘No,’ but then I framed it as doing improv theater that happens to be a game show. That was Family Feud, and I did that for four years.”
Karn has also worked with Allen again. He guest-starred in two episodes of Allen’s Fox sitcom Last Man Standing, and the two former costars joined forces to host History Channel’s reality competition Assembly Required in 2021 and the same channel’s docuseries More Power the following year.
He’s been married to Tudi Roche for four decades
Since 1985, Karn has been married to Tudi Roche — an actor who recurred on Home Improvement as a sister-in-law of Allen’s character — and the couple has a son, Cooper.
Karn shared with Woman’s World his secrets to a long-lasting relationship: keeping lines of communications open, expressing how you feel, picking your battles, and being “kind and courteous” to your spouse.
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“We have been together for almost 40 years, and we have worked together, too,” he said. “In fact, we met doing a play together, and then, years later, we went off to Kansas City to do another play together. We were with each other 24/7. When we work on different things, we come back, sit, and talk about our day. Now, we are nonstop together, and you would think it would be weird, but no, it wasn’t. It was actually great!”
Karn & Allen will reunite on Shifting Gears with other Home alums
In August, Deadline announced that Shifting Gears was arranging a Home Improvement reunion. The ABC sitcom stars Allen as a classic-car restorer who reconnects with his daughter and her children when she brings her family into his home. In its Season 2 premiere, scheduled for Wednesday, October 1, Karn will guest-star alongside fellow Home Improvement alumni Patricia Richardson and Debbe Dunning. The trio will play characters who “support Allen’s character … in an unexpected way,” Deadline reports.
@shifting_gearsabcShifting Sets. Home Improvement 🤝 Shifting Gears, October 1 on ABC!♬ original sound – Shifting Gears
In a jokey TikTok video, Shifting Gears posted on August 20, Karn, Richardson, and Dunning mistakenly head to their old Home Improvement stomping ground of Stage 4 at Walt Disney Studios before Allen flags them down and beckons them to Stage 6, where Shifting Gears films.
He’s also down for a Home Improvement reboot
In 2021, Karn said on Today he’d “absolutely” be down for a Home Improvement reboot.
“We’ve talked about it before, and the relationship … with studios and creators and networks gets very complicated,” Allen added. “I’d love to see where Al and Tim are, where Tool Time is right now, have the boys all grown up now with kids. I think it’s a great idea.”
In his Woman’s World interview, Karn said, “The Internet really wants a reboot of Home Improvement, but unfortunately, the producers are still in a lawsuit, and I guess they are figuring things out, so I don’t know if that is going to happen. I do, however, love getting the phone calls saying, ‘I hear you have been offered a billion dollars to do a show,’ and I am thinking, ‘Yeah, that would be great, and I would even take half of that in cash.’”
Remind 