"Two and a Half Men" was a comedy powerhouse — but things got dark
when the cameras were off. From hook-ups with prostitutes to Charlie Sheen's bag of porn,
making the show was often no laughing matter. Charlie Sheen's stint on "Two and a Half Men"
ended in March 2011 when he was suddenly fired following increasingly bizarre behavior. You'll
likely remember the actor's "tiger blood" phase which made him a tabloid sensation and alienated
him from his peers. Well, it wasn't always like that. As co-star Jon Cryer told ET in 2022,
when they first signed up for the series, Sheen was two years sober and on his A-game.
His comedic timing was impeccable and, as Cryer recalled, the two "got along great."
"And it absolutely felt easy with 'Two and a Half Men' those first couple of years."
However, things soon began to change. First, it was the little stuff. Cryer told
ET that his co-star started having "issues with the writing" on the show. Things got
progressively worse from there as Sheen fell off the wagon. By 2010, Sheen's
co-stars feared he was near rock bottom. Cryer wrote in his 2015 memoir, "So That Happened":
"Charlie didn't look so good as we started our eighth season. Gaunt,
pale, sallow, even sweaty occasionally. [...] His timing started to go off, too."
Furthermore, Sheen slowly began forgetting his lines and even his physicality failed
him. Cryer recalled a time when Sheen had to hold onto a couch to stay upright during
rehearsal. The comedian's colleagues felt helpless as they looked on and eventually,
Cryer and show creator Chuck Lorre considered pulling the plug. Cryer told ET:
"We said, 'It's not worth this show going on if going on enables Charlie Sheen to kill himself.'"
Charlie Sheen may have a long-running reputation as a womanizer, but in 2002 he
appeared ready to settle down when he tied the knot with Denise Richards. The couple welcomed
daughter Sami in 2004. That same year, Richards got pregnant with the couple's second daughter,
Lola. But it was all over in 2005. Despite being six months pregnant,
Richards filed for divorce. Richards later told the "Divorced Not Dead"
podcast that she couldn't handle Sheen's antics anymore. She said on the podcast:
"The behind-the-scenes stuff was way worse than what was out there."
While it was a difficult decision to divorce Sheen,
it ultimately came down to her kids. As Richards explained,
"I said to myself, 'Would I want my daughters to be married to this man?'"
And the answer was no. Jon Cryer actually offered a glimpse into their
dysfunctional marriage in his memoir. While filming the show's first season,
Sheen had only been married for a year and was expecting his first child with Richards. One day,
while on the "Two and a Half Men" set, Sheen showed up at his trailer,
holding a shopping bag and frantically asking for help. Cryer recalled in his book:
"He seemed panicked. 'Denise is coming over,' he said, 'and I need you to hide something for me.'"
Cryer feared there were drugs involved, but,
as he wrote in his book, the bag was "filled to the brim with porn." His biggest shock, though,
was that his co-star's home life seemed picture-perfect, but clearly wasn't.
Around the same time that Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards split, Jon Cryer also became
a single man. He had been married to Sarah Trigger since 1999, but the couple divorced
in 2004. It was a contentious split in which Cryer received nearly sole custody of their son,
Charlie Austin. As a result, the actor was left feeling broken. He wrote in his memoir:
"I was an emotional basket case."
So while filming the second season of "Two and a Half Men," both of
its leading stars were bachelors. Soon enough, Sheen started sharing
photos of his sexual conquests with Cryer. Cryer revealed in his book:
"He'd show me a picture he'd taken of somebody's vagina. I would invariably think,
'Why just this, and not the rest of the person?'"
Cryer himself wasn't ready to date, so when Sheen mentioned paying for sex,
he thought it was the perfect option. Cryer wrote in his book:
"Charlie suggested a few online purveyors he occasionally used. He and I had different
tastes, so I didn't go with his exact recommendations."
However, he wasn't a natural like Sheen. The actor shared in his memoir:
"My forays into prostitution were about as awkward as you might imagine."
Indeed, he once spent 25 minutes talking about the stock market with a match.
Back in January 2011, "Two and a Half Men" went on hiatus while Charlie Sheen sought help in rehab.
By February, he claimed he was sober and told "The Dan Patrick Show" that he was ready to get back to
work. However, he also said that those in charge refused to restart production. Sheen told Patrick:
"We are on forced hiatus. Check it, it's like I heal really quickly."
At the same time, Lorre decided to poke fun at Sheen. In the vanity card that
appeared at the end of that week's "Two and a Half Men," Lorre wrote:
"If Charlie Sheen outlives me, I'm gonna be really pissed."
Things quickly deteriorated, as the actor unleashed a number of tirades against his
then-boss. Sheen even began referring to him as Haim Levine. First, he told "The Alex Jones Show"
that Lorre simply couldn't handle how quickly he finished rehab. Sheen said on the show:
"I've spent, I think, close to the last decade, I don't know, effortlessly and
magically converting your tin can into pure gold."
Sheen went on to add:
"And the gratitude I get is this charlatan chose not to do his job, which is to write."
Sheen then told TMZ,
"I violently hate Haim Levine [...] He's a stupid,
stupid little man and a p----y punk that I'd never want to be like."
Angus T. Jones had a Charlie Sheen-esque meltdown of his own in November 2012. The
then-19-year-old joined Christopher Hudson, the founder and leader of a Seventh-day
Adventist Church called the Forerunner Chronicles, for an interview. The video,
which was posted to YouTube, quickly went viral. After explaining how he discovered
his newfound faith, Jones proclaimed he no longer wanted to be on "Two and a Half
Men." The actor also urged everyone to stop watching the show, pleading,
"Please stop filling your head with filth."
Saying the show went against Christian values, he doubled down on his cry to boycott it, claiming,
"Do some research on the effects of television in your brain and I promise you,
you'll have a decision to make when it comes to television."
“It's bad news."
The following day, the actor backtracked
slightly. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jones wrote in a statement:
"I apologize if my remarks reflect me showing indifference to and disrespect of my colleagues
and a lack of appreciation of the extraordinary opportunity of which I have been blessed."
Ultimately, after leaving the show after season 10, he only appeared on the show
once and soon after left Hollywood for good. In 2014, Jones told the Houston CBS affiliate,
KHOU-TV, that his feelings towards "Two and a Half Men" hadn't softened. Jones told the TV station:
"It was making light of topics in our world that are really problems for a lot of people."
"And I was a paid hypocrite because I wasn't okay with it, but I was still doing it."
In an effort to replace Charlie Sheen with an equally bankable star, "Two and A Half Men"
producers set their sights on Hugh Grant. Deadline confirmed in May 2011 that the British actor had
attended two in-person meetings and that he seemed interested in the role. Ultimately, however,
the deal fell through. A source explained to Deadline that it wasn't about the money,
as Grant was offered a reported $1 million per episode. Rather,
the insider noted that it came down to the show's schedule. The source told Deadline:
"He didn't want to do TV because those 24 episodes are a grind and a lot of work."
That may very well have been one of the reasons, but Grant himself told "The Howard Stern Show"
in 2016 that the main catalyst for him turning down the opportunity was fear. Grant recalled:
"They talked to me about it, but the problem was,
they didn't have a script or a new character. They just said, 'Trust us. We'll create one.'"
Although he respected the team and enjoyed watching the show,
he simply couldn't be swayed. Grant told Stern:
"I said, 'I'm too scared to sign up without a script.'"
When asked if he regretted his decision after watching Ashton Kutcher take over, Grant shared,
"What they created for Ashton Kutcher was clearly something completely different
from what they would have created for me, so it's hard to judge."
When "Two and a Half Men" officially ended in February 2015,
Chuck Lorre used the final episode's vanity card to reveal that Charlie
Sheen had been offered a cameo, but turned it down. Lorre wrote:
"Our idea was to have him walk up to the front door in the last scene, ring the doorbell, then
turn, look directly into the camera and go off on a maniacal rant about the dangers of drug abuse."
The script then reportedly called for Sheen to tell viewers that he didn't need to listen
to his own advice because he was "a ninja warrior from Mars" who could survive anything.
To conclude, a piano would then fall on him. This part actually did happen in the finale,
except Lorre used a Sheen body double whose back was turned to the camera the entire time. Lorre
continued in the vanity card that even though he and his writing staff thought the gag was funny,
Sheen apparently didn't. In a since-deleted interview with TMZ, Sheen said he was indifferent
about the finale, as well as Lorre. The actor went on to say this about his former boss:
"I don't care if he lives or dies. It doesn't matter."