Some quotes have been running around in recent weeks about the end of Two and a Half Men for Charlie Sheen, and what was happening on set around the time it became clear that Sheen was dealing with personal problems and substance abuse. I don’t want to dwell too much on the actor himself, as I remember covering his meltdown while he was simultaneously gaining popularity thanks to talking about “winning” and “tiger’s blood.”
Sheen seems to have come to terms with what happened years later, but he wasn’t the only person who was affected by the brouhaha. In a new tell-all, show creator Chuck Lorre got candid about Melanie Lynskey being terrified on set (though years later she also seems to be in an OK place with her former co-star), reaching out to Martin Sheen who’d been trying to intervene with Charlie for years, and how the network just wanted to keep the Two and a Half Men gravy train rolling. But the one thing he would really like you to take away from this conversation: He wants to put the kibosh on the rumors he fired Sheen from the popular sitcom.
In fact, in a long-ranging story from Lorre himself on Vanity Fair, the man said he did everything in his power to help Charlie Sheen get clean amidst the actor barely getting through scenes and admitting to facing astonishingly large gambling debts. As part of this profile Lorre admitted Sheen once told him he’d lost half a million dollars on one day’s worth of betting on football games. He needed the money, even when he could no longer handle the pressures of the long days on set.
What Really Went On With Charlie Sheen's Firing?
Things were not going well in his personal life, and it made working with the actor very difficult, but Lorre would like to set the record straight: He did not fire Charlie Sheen from Two and a Half Men.
Now let’s be clear about something. For years, the media has reported that I had Charlie fired. Ridiculously untrue. Anybody who knows anything about the television business knows that writers don’t have the power to fire the star of a billion-dollar show. We are fungible; stars are not. (Of course, this bullshit story wasn’t helped when Charlie sued me for $100 million for wrongfully firing him.)
We’ve previously rundown the full timeline of Charlie Sheen’s exit from Two and Half Men that saw him entering rehab, allegedly going on a bender, entering rehab again, taking shots at Lorre, and then losing his contract with CBS and Warner Bros TV in 2011. A lot of these reports indicated the actor was sacked, particularly after Sheen sued and said he was fired. But Lorre says this wasn’t in his control.
At one point during the chaos of the actor’s final run on the sitcom, Lorre said he was trying to push the narrative they needed to cut the season short, but Sheen wanted to do four more episodes, despite barely making it through scenes. He wasn’t the only one wanting more. CBS felt Two and a Half Men was a cash cow, because it was. Sheen’s behavior became Lorre’s problem, and to be clear, he is saying here that it was not going well.
So for about two years, I had to eat shit. Not just from Charlie. A lot of people piled on: David Letterman, NBC’s Today show, ABC’s Good Morning America, Alex Jones, Piers Morgan, TMZ, Twitter. Even Roseanne Barr, who always hated that I had a career after leaving her show. Charlie’s testosterone-cream, crack, and vodka meltdown was ratings gold, and everyone eagerly cashed in on it.
He just never was responsible for firing Charlie. Instead, he says Les Moonves ultimately decided they needed to keep the show going – just without Sheen’s involvement. Hugh Grant almost landed the role. That’s when Ashton Kutcher came in.
To be clear it’s all bygones now. The actor and his former showrunner even worked together on HBO a couple of years ago for the TV series Bookie. Sheen’s seemingly calmed down. Lorre’s no longer mad. He just wants you to know: Whatever happened with Charlie Sheen on CBS was not related to a direct decision he made. He was just trying to keep the show afloat amidst a torrent of chaos.
