From death threats to sex tapes, Chuck Lorre is reliving Charlie Sheen's "Two and a Half Men" exit.
Even if you've seen Sheen's bonkers Netflix documentary "aka Charlie Sheen" and read his memoir, "The Book of Sheen," you still don't know everything about the once troubled star's meltdown and departure from his hit sitcom "Two and a Half Men."
Show creator Lorre gets his turn to dish on the wild time and drops major, unexploded bombshells of his own in his new memoir, "Sitcom: A Memoir" (out Oct. 13), as revealed in a Vanity Fair excerpt.
Here are the biggest moments detonated from the explosive chapter in TV history:
Exploding lighter excuses and a purported sex tape that was too out-there for Charlie Sheen
After helping make the CBS sitcom a ratings juggernaut, Sheen flexed his star power to negotiate a four-day workweek and a jaw-dropping
salary that Lorre puts at approximately $1.25 million per episode. It was "maybe more," Lorre guesses.
But then the absences started piling up. Sheen routinely called in sick, blaming food poisoning, bad clams and frequent emergency dental appointments. One particularly bizarre excuse involved a Bic lighter that allegedly exploded and burned off his eyelashes.
In another jaw-dropping episode, Lorre recalls Sheen's manager boasting about flying across the country with a bag full of cash to buy a sex tape featuring the star.
"He’s Charlie Sheen. Sex is kind of his brand. Who cares about a sex tape?" Lorre recalls asking.
"Not this kind of sex," the manager replied, according to Lorre. Lorre offers no further details.
A terrifying 'Two and Half Men' scene with Melanie Lynskey was final straw for Charlie Sheen
After several high-profile incidents, the show continued until a disturbing final scene with Melanie Lynskey, who played Charlie's obsessive neighbor Rose. "He couldn’t remember any of his lines and had to use the furniture to keep himself upright," Lorre writes. "Melanie was terrified. It was clear to everyone that this man, whom we’d all grown to love, was in trouble. I had no choice but to shut down the show."
Lorre on why Sheen demanded to shoot four final 'Two and a Half Men' episodes
After the shutdown, Lorre writes that he called Sheen to explain his plan to shoot two more episodes before ending the season early, giving the troubled star a three-month break to clean up. But Sheen angrily demanded four more episodes, and Lorre refused to budge.
Lorre suspects Sheen was so desperate to keep working because he needed the $1.25 million per episode.
Lorre recalled sitting next to Sheen before a Monday table read when the actor casually revealed that he'd lost $500,000 betting on Sunday's football games. Lorre was horrified. Sheen was unfazed, confident he could win it back on Monday Night Football.
"Was it possible that Charlie wanted the two extra episodes in order to settle a debt with ... bad people? Was that why he went on that ridiculous tour, selling ‘Tiger Blood’ T-shirts? Was he desperate for the money?" Lorre writes.
Lorre insists he never fired Sheen, but still received death threats
Sheen's $100 million lawsuit against Lorre and Warner Bros. over his firing from "Two and a Half Men" was settled confidentially in September 2011. But Lorre still insists he never had the power to fire Sheen.
"Now let’s be clear about something. For years, the media has reported that I had Charlie fired. Ridiculously untrue. Anybody who knows anything about the television business knows that writers don’t have the power to fire the star of a billion-dollar show. We are fungible; stars are not."
Still, Lorre faced a fierce public backlash that went far beyond media criticism.
"Suddenly, I was a public figure. There were death threats. I needed police protection. Paparazzi were camped in front of my house. They chased me down the street. Photographed me coming out of restaurants."
Clean Sheen played degenerate gambler on 'Bookie.' He was perfect
Despite the lawsuits and acrimony, Lorre reached out to Sheen more than a decade later, while developing his2023 HBO Max comedy "Bookie," starring Sebastian Maniscalco as a sports bookie. Lorre had the perfect cameo in mind: the now-sober Sheen playing a real-life celebrity with gambling debts to open the series. (Fun fact: Jon Hamm was initially considered for the part)."So I called Charlie. And he couldn’t have been more gracious and grateful. We didn’t get into the weeds about the whole 'Two and a Half Men' nightmare. It was just over," Lorre writes. "The morning of the first 'Bookie' table read we hugged. Not a show business hug. A real one. Like when you see an old friend after a long time apart."
"And then (Sheen) proceeded to kill at the table. It was a comedy master class. Almost as if he’d been preparing to play a degenerate gambler his whole life," Lorre writes.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Charlie Sheen's 'Two and a Half Men' exit was wilder than we knew
