Their dispute caused a stir for a long time: Due to drug problems and his increasingly violent behavior (especially towards series creator Chuck Lorre), ‘Two And A Half Men’ figurehead Charlie Sheen was fired from the popular sitcom in 2011 after eight seasons on the top of the cast (and later replaced by Ashton Kutcher). And even years after this escalation, Sheen didn’t seem done with the matter, calling Lorre a “talentless pile of shit” in a 2017 interview.
An even bigger surprise was when it was announced this year that the two feuding parties had apparently made amends and were even working on a new project together: Sheen has a small supporting role as a fictionalized version of himself in Lorre’s comedy series “Bookmaker“. On the occasion of the recent American launch on the streaming service Max, he is also responsible for other series successes such as ‘The Big Bang Theory’ and ‘Mom’. Lorre has now spilled the beans and revealed how he and Sheen got back together…
Looking for a prominent guest star for “Bookie”
“Bookie” is about a bookmaker (played by Sebastian Maniscalco) who struggles to stay afloat in the competitive sports betting industry in Los Angeles. And because of the setting in the movie city of LA, Lorre and his co-series creator Nick Bakay realized when writing the first episode that the main character would have to have some high-profile celebrity clients:
“We wrote a scene with a then-unnamed celebrity”Lorre told the . “Then one night I thought, ‘I know exactly who should play this role.’ I called Nick and said: “It has to be Charlie Sheen.” Through our eight and a half years of working together, I knew that Charlie was very interested in football betting and knew everything about that world.’
“Old news”
It actually sounds like a suitable choice for the role in question, but Lorre first had to decide whether he wanted to work with Sheen again after the arguments at the time. But these are for him now “Old news”which now allowed him to watch ‘Two And A Half Men’ again: ‘I watched the reruns and really enjoyed it and his work.’
The question was whether Charlie Sheen would consider such a role in a Lorre production. And so one day Lorre called him – and thus opened doors that seemed to be open: “He was kind and grateful and wanted to put this all behind us. He came to read the script and was just wonderful.says Lorre enthusiastically.
It sounds as if the matter had already grown bigger for both of them in recent years, and they could now laugh about it even from some distance: “He recognized the humor of his journey. “He could look at this whole story from a distance, see the craziness of it and joke about it,” Lorre says.
Warm reunion between Lorre and Sheen
Accordingly, the reunion between them, which finally allowed them to put an end to the matter and bury the hatchet, was particularly cordial: “The first time I saw him again – after many, many years – was when reading the script for the first episode. We hugged each other. It was something I never believed would happen. But it happened and I’m grateful for it. It was a time in my life that was dark, scary, and full of anger. And suddenly everything was blown away.”
Another surprising ‘Two And A Half Men’ reunion in the first ‘Bookie’ episode also contributed to this: referencing a poker scene in the opening episode of ‘Two And A Half Men’, it appears almost twenty years later in “Bookie.” to a poker game with exactly the same participants from back then. And then there is Angus T. Jones, who once played Charlie’s cheeky nephew Jake in ‘Two And A Half Men’ and had since given up acting: “It was really great,” says Lorre, happy with this special performance. “It was healing to leave all that nonsense behind.”
That actually sounds like a nice happy ending to one of the biggest arguments in recent TV history. However, it is not yet clear when and where we will be able to see the result in Germany. Until now, Max productions in this country have mainly been shown on Sky/WOW and RTL+. However, it is unclear whether this will also be the case with ‘Bookie’.