“This was going to be my last contract that I was going to renew with USA Network for ‘Chrisley Knows Best.’ And I was working on my last season,” Todd
Todd Chrisley was going to make an unexpected move.
In a joint interview alongside wife Julie Chrisley and daughter Savannah Chrisley for their new Lifetime series, The Chrisleys: Back to Reality, the family patriarch looks back on his brood’s former USA Network show, Chrisley Knows Best, while speaking with PEOPLE exclusively.
“Chrisley Knows Best was a wonderful show and still is,” Todd, 57, says. “I mean, you can tell in how many times it’s airing and reruns and whatever. I’m grateful for what the show brought us.”
“But to whom much is given, much is required,” he explains.
Given how much went into making the show, Todd reveals he was planning to make the hit program’s milestone 10th season “my last.”
“I think what was required of us was that we had to present ourself one way while behind the scenes, we were actually having to live another way,” he shares. “And I’m not going back to that.”
From there, Todd claims: “I had started winding down.”
“This was going to be my last contract that I was going to renew with USA Network for Chrisley Knows Best,” he continues. “And I was working on my last season.”
Todd notes that “everyone in the family was fighting” with him, telling him that he had “to do another season.”
“And I’m fighting with them saying, ‘No, I’m not. No, I’m not. You guys have been doing it as long as I have. Keep going if that’s what you want to do,'” he recalls, before referencing his eventual incarceration, saying, “And then God kind of said, ‘Okay, I’ll fix that for you. None of you can do it.'”
USA Network declined PEOPLE’s request for comment.