How “Two and a Half Men” Creator Chuck Lorre and Charlie Sheen Ended Their 12-Year Feud: 'It Was Healing'
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“We did 170 episodes together before it all fell apart," Lorre said of their history. “Assuming he’s in a good place, I’m in a good place”
Two and a Half Men creator Chuck Lorre and Charlie Sheen have made amends 12 years after their public fallout ahead of their upcoming series, How to Be a Bookie.
Back in 2011, Sheen targeted Lorre in a series of rants where he called him a “clown,” “a stupid, stupid man” and hurled anti-semitic insults. At the time, the actor was struggling with his drug and alcohol addiction, which led him to go off on bizarre rants about “winning” and using “tiger’s blood.”
He was eventually fired from the hit sitcom and replaced by Ashton Kutcher, who played a billionaire businessman who bought Charlie’s house after his death until the show concluded in 2015.
Despite the broken bridges, when Lorre and his How to Be a Bookie co-creator Nick Bakay needed to cast “a real-life Hollywood star” to play a high roller, the writer immediately thought of Sheen.
“It should be Charlie,” he recalled considering the 58-year-old actor to Variety. “I remember Charlie was very much engaged in sports betting and he would tell me stories about it all the time. You know, when things were good.”
Though he felt apprehensive about their reunion, Lorre shared that the duo quickly picked up right where they left off.
“I was nervous, but almost as soon as we started talking, I remembered, we were friends once,” he explained. “And that friendship just suddenly seemed to be there again.”
Lorre continued, “I don’t want to be too mawkish about it, but it was healing. And he was also totally game to make fun of himself. When he came to the table read of that episode, I walked up, and we hugged. It was just great.”
The television writer noted how he “loved” working with Sheen on the comedy series.
“We did 170 episodes together before it all fell apart. And more often than not, we had a good time,” he said. “Assuming he’s in a good place, I’m in a good place.”
Following his public feud and firing, Sheen got sober. During an interview on ITV’s Loose Women in 2019, Sheen admitted that it was hard looking back at footage of his downfall.
“It feels awful. I can’t sit there and lie to you,” he said. “Some of it is very surreal. To this day, I am not sure how I created such chaos and wound up in that headspace. It’s as though there was some alien or demonic possession going on.”
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Two years later in February 2021, Sheen expressed his regret for the way he behaved amid his bitter public feud with Lorre.
"There was 55 different ways for me to handle that situation, and I chose number 56," he told Yahoo! Entertainment. "And so, you know, I think the growth for me post-meltdown or melt forward or melt somewhere — however you want to label it — it has to start with absolute ownership of my role in all of it."
Sheen added, "It was desperately juvenile."
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