Home Improvement star Zachery Ty Bryan says his domestic violence arrest in Oregon was a “wake-up call” as he tries to rebuild his life.
The former child star, now 41, claimed in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that the physical altercation began in October 2020 because his then-girlfriend, Johnnie Faye Cartwright, was upset that he was “living a double life” and still married – even though he had announced his divorce two weeks earlier.
He later pleaded guilty to two counts of fourth-degree threat and assault and was sentenced to three years’ probation, participating in a violence intervention program, and ordered to have no further contact with the victim.
Bryan says he is now trying to stay away from alcohol, but he and Cartwright are still together and are now raising three children of their own.
Meanwhile, the star is under further investigation for allegedly stealing the money from his friends and investors in a fraudulent scheme.
Zachery Ty Bryan, 41, was arrested in Oregon in October 2020 for domestic violence. He was accused of strangling his girlfriend at the time
Bryan had just announced two weeks earlier that he was divorcing his longtime wife, Carly Matros. The two are pictured together in 2016
Bryan rose to national fame in the 1990s as the eldest child of Home Improvement, which also starred Tim Allen and future heartthrob Jonathan Taylor Thomas.
After the show ended in 1999, Bryan turned to film roles, earning guest starring roles on television shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
He then became an executive producer of independent films and married his high school sweetheart Carly Matros in 2007.
They would go on to have four children that they raised together in a multi-million dollar home in Newport Beach. The youngest, a son, was born in March 2019 and joined three daughters, including twins.
In more recent years, Bryan has made a name for himself as a conservative commentator on platforms such as FOX News and The Daily Wire.
But in September 2020, Bryan announced that he and Matros were getting a divorce – plagiarizing Armie Hammer’s divorce notice almost word for word.
He now admits to The Hollywood Reporter, “I was just in the party mood — making movies, traveling, drinking. I didn’t live the way I was brought up, you know what I mean?
“I wasn’t a faithful husband and I wasn’t the best of me,” he continued. “I thought I could go out and do whatever I wanted, have fun, come home and be a family man with my kids. That’s not how the real world works.’
Just 16 days after the announcement, in October, Bryan was arrested in Oregon and charged with felony strangulation, fourth-degree assault, coercion, endangerment, harassment and interference with making a police report.
The most serious charges, including misdemeanor strangulation, were later dropped and he pleaded guilty to two counts.
Bryan was subsequently sentenced to three years’ probation, participating in a violence intervention program, and ordered not to have any contact with the victim.
He was also ordered by the court not to “purchase, possess or consume alcoholic beverages” or be in a place where alcohol is sold or served as the primary purpose.
It was his second arrest of 2020, after he was booked for drunk driving in Orange County in May. He also pleaded guilty in that case and was sentenced to five years of probation and 18 months in a multi-offender alcohol program due to a record of other DUI arrests in 2004, 2007 and 2017.
Bryan had risen to national fame in the 1990s as the eldest child of Home Improvement, which also starred Tim Allen and future heartthrob Jonathan Taylor Thomas.
After the show ended in 1999, Bryan turned to film roles and earned guest starring roles on television shows. He is pictured here on Home Improvement with Tim Allen
In recent years, he became a conservative commentator on FOX News and The Daily Wire
According to Oregon police records obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, Cartwright claimed that on the night of the alleged assault, Bryan, with whom she had been in a “sexually intimate” relationship, woke her up and demanded to know what happened to his wife. has happened. mobile phone charging cables.
She claimed he “pulled her hair” and punched her several times in the face.
The two then fell onto a flight of stairs, after which, according to the police report, Bryan “grabbed Cartwright’s neck with both hands and strangled her” for about 45 seconds.
Responding officers said they saw multiple injuries to Cartwright, who claimed Bryan had been assaulted a month earlier.
But Bryan claimed that Cartwright woke him up and bit him in the groin.
He claimed she inflicted her injuries on herself in an attempt to frame him for wanting to “ruin his career” after he said he wanted to break up and stop paying her rent.
“I heard her say to 911, ‘This is the Home Improvement guy. He’s the famous guy,'” Bryan reportedly told officers on the scene.
Looking back, he says the arrest was “bloated so out of proportion” by the media and claims it wasn’t as physical as the police report says.
He explained that he and Cartwright started seeing each other when he was still married and she sometimes got upset about his “double life.”
And even though he announced his divorce, Bryan claimed the fight escalated that night because they both “had too much to drink.”
“We didn’t even really get that physical,” he said. ‘We’ve become very noisy. We yelled and being in a townhome we had [thin walls]everyone could hear.’
He continued to say that Cartwright was “very upset about my situation at the time.”
And, he claimed, ‘at the end of the day, [the police] throw a ton of points at you because in the end they want you to plead something,” pointing out that the police nicknamed him “Country Club Zach” and seemed to mock his fame.
“I could have fought it… but that’s more stress and drama,” Bryan explained. “I got two fouls and quit.”
But he said he now thanked God for his arrest and described it as a “wake-up call.”
“I went through a situation that I’m pretty sure a lot of people around the world go through with their partners, and that was a learning experience,” said Bryan.
He acknowledged that he “definitely [has] a problem with drinking,” but does not believe the term “alcoholic” applies to him.
“Dude, I started drinking when I was 14,” he said. “Back then I was going to nightclubs and they just let me in because I was the Home Improvement kid.”
Now, he says, he tries to stay away from alcohol, explaining, “I don’t go out to get lit, and that takes away a lot of my problems.”
Bryan is still under scrutiny for his role in selling tokens for an ag-tech company that never materialized
He and Cartwright are still together.
In November 2021, just a year after his arrest, Bryan revealed that he and Cartwright were engaged to be married.
Based on the timeline of his now-private Instagram account, The Hollywood Reporter discovered, Cartwright was already pregnant with a girl at the time.
He announced the birth on the social media platform in spring 2022.
In November, Bryan also revealed that he and Cartwright were expecting twins, and she gave birth in May.
But the actor/producer is still under scrutiny from some who considered him one of their best friends.
In 2018, they explain, Bryan joined Producers Market, an ag-tech startup focused on farmers and the global food chain.
The company wanted to empower farmers by cutting out the middleman and putting profits more directly into their tokens using a QR code that allowed them to tip farmers.
It explored the use of tokens to fund growth and cited Bryan — who had made millions in the early days of Bitcoin — as an advisor to help develop relationships within the crypto community.
He then invested the money in the company and asked others to do the same.
But plans for a token system never materialized and in 2019 the company officially decided to end Bryan’s role as an advisor.
Executives learned just a year later that Bryan sold the nonexistent tokens to other investors.
‘Mr. Bryan misrepresented our company without our knowledge, participation or consent,” a spokesperson said. “When we found out, we immediately imposed a cease and desist order on him.
“This activity is unacceptable and not a reflection of our mission to support the well-being of farmers and our food systems.”
But Bryan denies he had “a shady scam deal – that’s just not me.”
“What people don’t understand is that you take risks, nothing is certain,” he said, vowing that if the company ever goes public, he will personally hand out his Producers Market shares to those still waiting for their money .
