Inside Todd Chrisley's Reality TV Comeback Plans After Prison Release

After a year back in the world, Todd and Julie Chrisley are easing into TV again — just not the glossy, joke-buttoned version fans remember. Todd says if the family returns to a series after prison, it has to feel a lot more like real life and a lot less like a setup punchline machine.

"I am not coming back in that same format of Chrisley Knows Best. I want, when we come back on television, it to be very authentic. I think the people that tune in to us deserve that right. And that have stuck with us deserve that."

The quick catch-up

• 2022: Todd and Julie are convicted on federal charges including conspiracy to commit bank fraud, wire fraud, and tax evasion. They get a combined 19-year sentence and insist they are innocent.
• January 2023: They report to their facilities — Todd to Federal Prison Camp Pensacola in Florida, Julie to Federal Medical Center Lexington in Kentucky.
• May 2025: They are released one day after President Donald Trump issues presidential pardons.
• September 2025: Lifetime premieres The Chrisleys: Back to Reality, a docuseries that had started as a Savannah-led effort about fighting to free her parents and then caught the family's reunion when cameras jumped back in after the pardons.
• July 2025 and beyond: Todd starts floating future TV plans on his podcast and talk shows; by May 2026, on 'Chrisley Confessions 2.0,' he is spelling out what a return would look like.

What the new show is (and is not)

Todd made it clear on his May 2026 'Chrisley Confessions 2.0' episode that he has no interest in rebooting 'Chrisley Knows Best' as-is. If the family goes back to a series, the pitch is stripped-down and honest. That mindset already bled into Lifetime's 'The Chrisleys: Back to Reality,' which premiered in September 2025.

That show actually started as Savannah Chrisley's project, built around her and her siblings trying to free their parents. Filming was mostly finished before the pardons happened — and then, suddenly, there was a finale. Cameras rolled again just in time to catch Todd and Julie walking out in May 2025 and the tearful reunion that followed. As Julie put it on 'The Tamron Hall Show,' the timing was, well, convenient: Savannah could not have known the pardon would land when it did, but it did, and the series captured the moment.

The money talk that would not die

On 'The Tamron Hall Show' in September 2025, Hall pressed Todd on chatter that he and Julie somehow ended up '$36 million ahead' after prison, even with a reported $3 million in legal fees. For the record, those numbers were Hall's on-air figures at the time and, as noted by Us Weekly then, had not been independently verified.

Todd's answer was blunt: they shot two episodes to close out the documentary story; it was not a cash grab. He said the point was to put a period on the end of that chapter, not rake in a windfall.

Is there more TV coming?

Short answer: probably, just not a decade of it. Back in September 2025, Todd said he did not want to do 'that many years' again, but also added that the show would continue and was going to get picked back up. On his July 2025 podcast, he went a step further and teased a slate: the family is moving forward with a new series, and he has three other projects he says are now projected to be picked up. The wild part is he sketched them out while he was incarcerated — he kept his mind busy by treating prison like a bare-bones studio and workshopping ideas.

Odds and ends

During the press run, they also fielded the usual divorce-rumor questions. But the main throughline right now is simple: they are out, they maintain their innocence, and if TV is in the cards, Todd wants the next chapter to look and feel a lot less produced and a lot more lived-in.