Thomas opts for school 'Improvement'
Leaving 'Home': Jonathan Taylor Thomas, left, with Tim Allen is leaving 'Home Improvement' to concentrate on school (Touchstone Television).
LOS ANGELES — To teen heartthrob Jonathan Taylor Thomas, it came down to a simple decision: Stay on for the eighth season of ABC's hit Home Improvement or concentrate on preparing for college.
It was no contest, he insists.
So in Tuesday's season opener (8 p.m. ET/PT), his character Randy Taylor is going off to work on an environmental project, studying the rain forest in Costa Rica. In real life, though, 17-year-old Thomas will be in Los Angeles, knee-deep in his junior year at a private high school.
"I've been dreaming of going to college all my life," he says. "School comes first."
The sitcom grind was cramping his academic style.
"It was tough working 60 hours a week and going home and doing several hours of homework every night," explains Thomas, who lives in the San Fernando Valley with his divorced mother. "I've got a lot of tough classes . . . Junior year is an extremely important year for getting into college."
Thomas, who has been on Home since he was 8, is eyeing universities such as Yale and Harvard. That means he needs excellent grades and upper-echelon SAT scores.
"I wanted to put maximum effort into school at this point, and I didn't think I could do that and still work on the show at the same time," he says.
The news isn't all bad for JTT's legion of teen fans: Tuesday's show won't be his last. He'll also appear in a Christmas episode, which will be shot in November.
And after that?
"I don't see it, because this will be the last year of the show," he says.
But neither ABC nor the show's producers, who've said they'd like Thomas to appear in more episodes, have officially declared this is the final season.
No matter, Thomas says. "If Home Improvement does continue on for a year or two longer, it'll be without me. Nothing changes the fact that I want to be in school. If it was clear now that the show was going on and on, I'd still do the same thing."
Thomas isn't giving up acting, just shifting focus to his budding film career, which has included roles in Man of the House and Wild America and the voice of Simba in The Lion King. Upcoming releases include Disney's I'll Be Home For Christmas (out in November) and an independent project called Speedway Junkie.
By Dennis Hunt, Special for USA TODAY
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