Todd Chrisley Claims ‘My Last Season’ of ‘Chrisley Knows Best’ Came Before Guilty Conviction (Exclusive)

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.”

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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.

Chrisley Knows Best premiered on the USA Network in 2014.

The series followed as Todd and Julie navigated the ups and downs of leading their Southern family. Savannah, Chase Chrisley, Grayson Chrisley, Chloe Chrisley, Nanny Faye Chrisley, Kyle Chrisley and Lindsie Chrisley also starred.

Its success led to spinoffs, What’s Cooking With Julie Chrisley and Growing Up Chrisley. However, all of their shows (including a planned E! dating series, Love Limo, which Todd was set to host) were canceled after Todd and Julie were convicted on tax and bank fraud charges in June 2022.

The final season of Chrisley Knows Best unceremoniously concluded in March 2023, just two months after Todd and Julie, 52, reported to prison.

The longtime couple, who wed in 1996, were supposed to serve a combined 19 years behind bars. However, their sentence, which was reduced, was fully pardoned by President Donald Trump on May 28 and they were released the following day.

During the pair’s time away, their family began working on an all-new reality series with Lifetime, which premiered on Sept. 1.

Chase, 29, and Savannah, 28, are among the show’s executive producers.

“I think now the show that Savannah and Chase and the rest of the family have started with Lifetime, I’m going to be watching the first season just as you’re going to be watching it. We have seen no clips,” Todd says. “We’re seeing and getting the same shock value on some things as what the fans are going to be getting. What I think is going to be different now is going to be an authenticity that truly was not allowed to be shown in Chrisley Knows Best.”

“Savannah has an opinion. She’s making her opinion known,” he continues. “Chase has … I haven’t really seen a whole lot of what Chase has said, but I know that they’re going to be saying whatever they wanted to say and they didn’t have me in the corner looking at them. They didn’t get that side eye with this show.”

He then jokes, “So, we’ll see how well they’ve been raised.” 

Savannah tells PEOPLE that her family was “filming this without any idea that they were ever coming home,” though Todd and Julie were able to be included upon release.

“For me, in my mind, filming this show was going to put it on TV, and then maybe it would bring more attention to the corruption, and then it would get the president’s attention, his office’s attention,” she explains, nothing how “that was my whole reason for doing the show” even though they “got word that the pardons were happening” days after filming initially wrapped.

“Throughout this show, it was important to kind of claw back the layers and show people the ins and outs of the criminal case and who was working with the government, who wasn’t, [and] how there was prosecutorial misconduct,” she concludes. “I wanted to go into every single detail because when you see the United States of America versus the Chrisleys, there’s nothing that can prepare you for that.” 

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New episodes of The Chrisleys: Back to Reality will air Mondays and Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on Lifetime through its Sept. 16 finale.