Here is news that no one expected to be able to give: actor Charlie Sheen and screenwriter Chuck Lorre will work together again. She is not an innocent. After ending their last collaboration on Two and a Half Men with a high-profile dismissal and a million-dollar lawsuit, the prolific television creator and formerly the highest-paid actor on American television will collaborate together on the comedy How to be a bookie that Lorre is writing for Max, the new Warner Bros Discovery content platform that will replace HBO Max.
How to be a bookie will have Sebastian Maniscalco (The Irishman) as a bookmaker overwhelmed by the direction his sector is taking, increasingly computerized and legalized, and Sheen will have a recurring role. This means that he will not be in all the episodes of the first season but confirms that the actor and Lorre have made peace after the drift that took their professional relationship after eight seasons in Two and a Half Men.
Recall that Charlie Sheen was the highest-paid actor on television when he was fired from Two and a Half Men at a salary of $1.8 million per episode (and between 22 and 24 episodes per season). Chuck Lorre, for his part, was one of the all-powerful writers of the medium with other series on the air such as Mike and Molly or The big bang theory, which replaced Two and a Half Men as the most successful comedy on free-to-air television.
Sheen’s problems with addiction, however, led to erratic behavior on the production: delays, unprofessionalism in learning lines, and a difficult attitude that added to the headlines he was getting in the press for various altercations. In December 2009, for example, he was arrested for mistreating his wife, Brooke Mueller, and in October 2010 he had to compensate the legendary Plaza Hotel after causing $7,000 worth of damage to his suite during a night of alcohol and cocaine. .
The relationship between Sheen and Lorre reached a point of no return when the actor blurted out that Lorre was “taking money out of his pocket†from both his family and the Two and a Half Men crew, and that he was a “stupid little†man. and a “shit up” whom he hated “violently” and challenged to a physical fight to resolve their differences. Lorre responded to him through vanity cards, some texts that he wrote for the end of the episodes of his productions.
“I exercise regularly. I have a healthy diet. I try to get enough sleep. I see my doctor once a year and the dentist twice. I brush my teeth every night (…). I see a psychologist and practice hobbies to reduce stress. I do not drink. I do not smoke. I don’t take drugs. I don’t have reckless sex with strangers. If Charlie Sheen outlives me, he’s going to screw me a lot â€, could be read at the end of an episode of Two and a Half Men.
The rest is history. The filming of Two and a Half Men was halted due to Sheen’s health problems, the actor entered a rehabilitation center for the third time in twelve months and Lorre, who no longer trusted the effectiveness of his treatments, issued an ultimatum to the channel. CBS: Either they fire Sheen or he’s going to write comedies for other channels. As a result, Sheen ended up on the street, Ashton Kutcher was hired to replace him, and Sheen sued the production company Warner Bros for his dismissal.
And, while Two and a Half Men continued to thrive for five more seasons with Kutcher, Sheen entered a self-destructive loop with a murky polygamous relationship in the midst of his drug excesses, a comedy tour that brought him closer to the most reactionary circles of the United States.
In February 2015, Two and a Half Men said goodbye with one last poisoned dart aimed at Charlie Sheen. In the final episode, it was discovered that his character, Charlie, had been alive all this time, kidnapped by Rose (Melanie Lynskey). In the last sequence, when he was going to meet Walden (Ashton Kutcher) and Alan (Jon Cryer) again, Lorre killed him by throwing a piano at his head. The writer even made an appearance in the scene, breaking the fourth wall and releasing a “winningâ€, the phrase made popular by Sheen, before a piano fell on his head as well.
Charlie Sheen’s public rehabilitation began at the end of that same year when he acknowledged that, during his image and health crisis in 2011, he was dealing with his HIV diagnosis, which in the United States served to raise awareness among the heterosexual community about the virus.
