“Home Improvement” star Patricia Richardson has spoken out to defend Roseanne Barr by arguing that the sitcom legend changed Hollywood for the better.
Patricia Richardson received five Emmy Award nominations for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series and two Golden Globe Award nominations for her work on Home Improvement with Tim Allen.
After leaving “Home Improvement,” Richardson starred as Dr. Andy Campbell in “Strong Medicine” from 2002 to 2005. She played presidential campaign manager Sheila Brooks in the last two seasons of the Emmy Award-winning “The West Wing.”
She appeared on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” “NCIS,” “Blindspot,” “The Blacklist,” and “Grey’s Anatomy” Richardson’s film work includes her Independent Spirit Award-nominated role in 1997’s “Ulee’s Gold.”
She had roles in “A Christmas in Tennessee,” “A Very Vintage Christmas.” “County Line” and its sequels “County Line: All In” and “County Line: No Fear.”
She will next be seen in Linda Yellen’s upcoming movie “Chantilly Bridge.” She sat for an interview with Fox News and gave credit to Roseanne Barr for changing the way women are portrayed in Hollywood.
She said: “I always give credit to ‘Roseanne’ because before ‘Roseanne,’ every mother sort of had to look perfect. Be perfect.
“That was what I loved so much about her when I was, you know, in bed with my pregnancy and just being a mom.
“And I would watch her, and I’d be like, ‘Yes, this woman, oh my gosh, this woman, this family.’
“I think women have changed a lot. I mean, that’s one of the biggest changes.
“And of course, obviously, it’s gotten a little more realistic, maybe too much so.
“I think that reality television has been bad for America.
“For years and forever, people watch television the way they read the newspaper or books or anything that’s really out there in society.
“They judge what’s normal by seeing what’s on television because it’s like, you think, ‘I thought I was the only person who felt that or thought that or the only family that has this problem.’
“And then you see on TV, well, this is how they’re handling it.
“And TV used to be much more so idealized characters.
“And so that probably helped keep society in order, and now you have reality TV.
“I know somebody who cast all those shows.
“I mean, the really successful ones, and they look for people who are going to be difficult and cantankerous, and they look for that.
“And then people watch that and they think that’s what’s normal. It’s not normal.”
She said nshe was hesitant to take her breakout role on Home Improvement:
“When they told me that these guys that created the show were the guys that created ‘Roseanne,’ I went, ‘Oh, OK, my favorite show, my maybe favorite female character on television.’
“And obviously, they can write women.
“Just open it anywhere in the script, and you can tell on one page whether they’re developing story and character or whether they’re just trying to set up jokes, which is most of the time in a sitcom, what you get.
“And we were impressed,” she said.
