"3 young stars end salary dispute" The Vindicator (July 30, 1993)

3 young stars end salary dispute

The ‘Taylor boys’ held out for two days for a higher salary.

By Ray Richmond

Los Angeles Daily News

The “sick-out” that held up production this week for the third season of the hit ABC comedy “Home Improvement” ended uneventfully Wednesday when all three of the show’s child stars — Zachery Ty Bryan, Taran Smith and Jonathan Taylor Thomas — returned to work after a salary dispute of two days.

As holdouts go, it wasn’t exactly a blockbuster. Representatives of the three reportedly were demanding that the boys have their salary doubled for each of the coming season’s allotment of 30 episodes. But once “Home Improvement” producers Touchstone Television and Wind Dancer Productions put out a casting call searching for replacements, the brief battle of wits ended.

Miraculous recovery: The agents for the boys all had called in to report that their clients were “ill” and unable to report for the beginning of work on “Home Improvement’s" third season. But by Wednesday, all of them evidently were feeling better. “There are no indications of health problems, Wind Dancer president Rick Leed told the Associated Press. “It’s the miracle of antibiotics, I guess.”

No specifics: Judy Savage, the agent for Taran, said that each of the three boys wound up with a “fair bump” in salary, though she declined to cite specifics. She did, however, note that a previously published report that the boys each make $8,000 per episode and were seeking a raise to $25,000 was “way off” and that “all three receive different amounts.” As for the new agreement, Ms. Savage added, “We’re not ecstatically happy, but at least it’s resolved.”

Not unusual: Ms. Savage also said that the request for more money was hardly out of the ordinary. “In the third year of a show, it’s generally the industry practice to renegotiate the child contracts and double what they received in the second season.” But Disney “wouldn’t budge,” stressed Ms. Savage, “until the kids got the flu. We were left with no other choice.”