When Richard Karn landed the role of Al Borland on HOME IMPROVEMENT, he was, fittingly, a real-life manager for an apartment complex.
Entertainment Tonight recently showed Karn old footage of himself walking around the property.
“This is my lovely building,” Karn says in the video. “It’s about 30 units. I have a couple of two bedrooms if anyone is interested.”
Karn laughed at seeing himself in the video.
“They paid us with free rent,” he explained. “The rent was $900.”
Karn played a co-host of a fictional tv series in HOME IMPROVEMENT with Tim Allen. In real-life and on the series, he was pretty handy.
One day he got a call to fix someone’s sink, and when he knocked on their door to fix it, he opened it to a party of people. The ones who lived in the apartment wanted to show their friends that their apartment manager was a TV star.
“Not everybody gets that!” Karn said. “I go back to my wife and go, ‘I think we can move now.’”
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He said handiwork is in his blood, as both his father and grandfather were builders.
“And so even though I didn’t go into that business — I became an actor — it was there, you know? We all become our parents in one way or another, and I think a lot of my dad was in the character of Al,” he told PEOPLE in June.
His dad loved the sho, and even told Karn that he looked like he knew what he was doing on the show. It meant a lot to the actor.
On set, “every day was fun,” said Karn. “I just remember laughing a lot and feeling good about the work.”
He said fans still watch the show and loves that it brings families together.
Thanks to streamers “kids who were the ages of the kids [on the show] who now have their own kids, they’re watching it because it’s something they feel safe with, and it shows life in a very specific, wonderful way.”
Karn’s road to acting wasn’t easy, like many in Hollywood can say.
After he graduated with a drama degree, he landed a spot in a beer commercial but went six months without another high-profile gig. He later moved to LA, where he got a traffic ticket that changed his life. He was sent to traffic school where he met an agent who told him about HOME IMPROVEMENT.
Despite being told the part was already cast, he finagled his way into an audition.
“I auditioned because life keeps going,” Karn said. “Maybe they would see me now and remember me for another show or part.”
After the person who was cast decided to take a movie role instead, Karn got the job. He got to spend eight years on the show, and he’s grateful for it.
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