After years of feuds and scandals, Charlie Sheen is poised to return to TV – backed by his former Two and a Half Men boss.
Deadline reports Charlie Sheen has been cast in ‘king of sitcoms’ Chuck Lorre’s first Max (formerly HBO Max) comedy series, How To Be a Bookie.
Sheen is tipped to have a recurring role in the single-camera comedy, which will star US comedian and actor Sebastian Maniscalco.
“A veteran bookie (Maniscalco) struggles to survive the impending legalisation of sports gambling, increasingly unstable clients, family, co-workers, and a lifestyle that bounces him around every corner of Los Angeles, high and low,” the show’s logline reads.
Lorre will be co-writer and executive producer, while Maniscalco will also be the executive producer.
Sheen’s troubled years
Sheen’s return to TV comes after Lorre famously fired him from Two and a Half Men amid the star’s infamous 2011 meltdown.
Sheen, who led the cast of the wildly successful sitcom for eight seasons and was reportedly earning US$1.25 million ($1.86 million) an episode, publicly derided Lorre after Two and a Half Men‘s production was shut down so Sheen could go into rehab.
A furious Sheen insisted he was clean, and unleashed on Lorre – who has headed shows such as The Big Bang Theory and Mom – with a host of slurs and calling him a “stupid, stupid little man”.
His Two and a Half Men character was brutally killed off, with Ashton Kutcher was brought in to take his place.
The recent turnaround in the duo’s relationship is surprising given just last year Lorre was reportedly shopping around a sitcom pilot script titled Sex, Drugs and a Sitcom, based on Lorre’s experience working on Two and a Half Men with Sheen.
Since the dramatic fallout of his 2011 meltdown, Sheen has become sober and expressed regret, while attributing his behaviour to drugs and testosterone cream.
Sheen went on to star in sitcom Anger Management for 100 episodes following his dismissal from Two and a Half Men.
But he continued to court controversy, reportedly firing costar Selma Blair via a text in which he called her a “c–t” – although Sheen claimed Blair was written out because the show was not about the relationship between their two characters.
Sheen also ran into trouble after publicly revealing his HIV-positive status in 2015, with reports emerging he had not told 25 previous sexual partners of his diagnosis; in 2022 he settled a lawsuit filed by an ex-partner who claimed the actor knowingly exposed her to HIV.
Since Anger Management was axed in 2014, Sheen has appeared in shows such as The Goldbergs and movies including the 2017 comedy Mad Families.
Neither Sheen nor Lorre have publicly commented on their reported collaboration for How To Be a Bookie.
