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Mayim Bialik is opening up about the impact of Charlie Sheen’s highly public falling out with Two and a Half Menand The Big Bang Theoryco-creator Chuck Lorre.
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“It was very, very difficult for us to see [Lorre] like that,” Bialik shares in an EW exclusive clip from an upcoming episode of Mayim Bialik’s Breakdownpodcast.
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“I know a lot of people are like, ‘Serves you right,’ like, ‘You’re a rich producer,'” Bialik says, noting that she always reminds critics that “there’s a human” dimension to the scandal.
Mayim Bialik saw Chuck Lorre through his darkest days, and still shudders when looking back on that time.
The actress and game show host dives back into her 11 years on a Lorre hit — The Big Bang Theory — during a ranging conversation with the sitcom king himself during Tuesday’s episode of her Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown podcast.
In an exclusive clip shared ahead of the conversation, Bialik zeroes in on the impact that Lorre’s infamous, highly public falling out with Two and a Half Menstar Charlie Sheen had on the TV vet from her vantage point on the Big Bangset. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t positive.
Lorre recently dusted up a multifront controversy storm of his own with the release of his first-ever memoir, aptly titled Sitcom. In the book, Lorre revisits a contentiousTwo and a Half Mencasting session, expresses his doubts about hiring Anna Faris forMom, and claims that Roseannewriters were forced to put Tom Arnold’s name on scripts he didn’t write.
The Big Bang Theoryis just about the only series in his repertoire that survived the memoir unscathed. But the battles occurring on other sets followed him to the geekified sitcom
“How did you feel about him saying that The Big Bang Theory was his safe place when there was so much craziness going on on Two and a Half Men?” Bialik’s partner and cohost, Jonathan Cohen, asks the actress and neuroscientist in the clip.
“I remember those years. It was very, very difficult for us to see him like that,” she replies.
“I know a lot of people are like, ‘Serves you right,’ like, ‘You’re a rich producer.’ But there’s a human” dimension to what went down between Sheen and Lorre, Bialik insists, beneath all the wealth and glamour.
The son of acclaimed actor Martin Sheen, Charlie Sheen had done occasional television work prior to Two and Half Men, like his role on the political sitcom Spin City. But he built his own star nearly entirely out of big-screen roles, having turned in celebrated performances in films like Platoon, Wall Street, and Being John Malkovich.
His casting on Lorre’s sitcom about a louche jingle writer, his uptight brother, and the brother’s preternaturally laid-back son was a coup, and played no small part in Two and a Half Man‘simmense success on CBS. Portraying Charlie Harper led to four Emmy nominations, but it all went sideways in 2011.
As the series’ eighth season neared its finale, Sheen began issuing a barrage of public broadsides against Lorre, calling him a “clown” and “a stupid, stupid little man,” even employing antisemitic insults in his attacks. Before season 8 even wrapped, CBS terminated Sheen from the show, prompting the actor to retaliate with a $100 million wrongful termination lawsuit that was eventually settled.
Pointing to Lorre’s origins as a musician, Bialik explains, “Like, he’s a guy from Long Island. He’s a musician who just wanted to play his guitar on stage and meet pretty girls, right? There’s a humanity to when the person that you are working with is, first of all, very sick, and not behaving kindly, and then publicly assaults you. That’s very, very powerful, and this was the beginning of social media.”
Bialik recalls seeing how “social media took this Charlie Sheen thing and ran with it in a way that, the deepest insults that he hurled were magnified.” Had the same scenario unfolded today, “people would be like, ‘Yep, another day. Another actor cursing at a producer,'” Bialik jokes. But “back then it was like, ‘What?’ And also Charlie Sheen, this is a legacy actor, meaning, his father’s Martin Sheen. His brother’s Emilio Estevez! Like, come on. It’s Hollywood royalty. It was huge.”
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The scandal was indeed huge enough to permanently put a dent in Sheen’s career. He entered a substance abuse rehabilitation program that year, and in 2013, publicly reached out to “make amends” with Lorre — an offer that went unanswered.
At the time, Lorre said that Sheen’s meltdown “broke my heart… I thought we were on the same road together,” he said of the “painful year. I’ll be sorting it out for a long time.”
It took a decade for the two to finally reunite.
In November 2023, Lorre cast Sheen in a role on his HBO comedy Bookie. Though Lorre admitted to being “nervous” about the meeting, he said he found that their “friendship just suddenly seemed to be there again… 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.”
Bialik’s full interview with Lorre on Mayim Bialik’s Breakdownreleases on Tuesday on all major podcasting platforms.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
