Two and a Half Men director lays bare Charlie Sheen’s desperate decline before he was FIRED from hit show – as his stylist insists 58-year-old actor is now completely clean and ‘doesn’t even smoke cigarettes’
A Two and a Half Men director has revealed the shocking details of Charlie Sheen’s drug-driven spiral that led to his sensational firing from the hit sitcom — including how he stopped showing up for work.
The 58-year-old actor, who played Charlie Harper on the smash hit series, was dramatically dropped from the CBS show in 2011 after making a slew of controversial statements about showrunner Chuck Lorre while also battling addiction.
Vice TV’s latest episode of The Dark Side of the 2000s is devoted to Sheen’s self-destruction, with Two and a Half Men director Jamie Widdoes shedding light on his fall from grace and how the star’s behavior affected the cast and crew. influenced.
“We all just kept going, trying to separate everything that happened to Charlie outside from our job, which was to make a television show,” he began. ‘And that became more and more difficult and a bigger problem.’
Charlie Sheen played Charlie Harper on the hit series Two and a Half Men from 2003 to 2011
The actor, pictured here with his co-star Jon Cryer, was sensationally fired from the sitcom in March 2011
He was seen on the roof of the Live Nation Building in Beverly Hills drinking “Tiger Blood” on March 7, 2011 – the day he was fired
The actor’s infamous downward spiral was highly publicized for many years
In 2010, amid his public battle with addiction, Sheen was given a pay raise of $1.8 million per episode, making him the highest-ranking TV actor in history.
However, this move proved disastrous and in October 2010, just two months after leaving rehab, he allegedly vandalized a hotel room at the Plaza Hotel in New York.
He was found naked and heavily intoxicated at the time.
“We were all genuinely concerned for him,” Widdoes continued. “And Charlie (would just say), ‘Don’t worry, I’m fine.’
“What he was fighting outside not only started leaking in, it started flowing in.”
Gabriel Solana, Sheen’s personal makeup artist, also said the actor would tell him privately that he was struggling with the show’s stagnation.
“I knew something about Charlie wasn’t very comfortable on the show just yet, because he’d come up to me and say, ‘I don’t know man, I’m not feeling this.’ This is already a bit monotonous for me. What’s next for me?”
Solana added that Sheen wanted to “broaden” his horizons, but it “didn’t happen for him” and he remained “stuck” on his Two and a Half Men persona.
Sheen with his father Martin Sheen six months after being released from Two and a Half Men
Sheen’s dramatic departure came after he made controversial statements about showrunner Chuck Lorre while also battling addiction
Two and a Half Men director Jamie Widdoes talked about Sheen’s spiral in ViceTV’s latest documentary episode of The Dark Side of the 2000s
Widdoes revealed that Sheen soon stopped showing up at work altogether.
“The word came that Charlie’s stand-in is going to be doing the Monday table talk,” he said.
“And what happened, as we approached season eight, was that Monday table reading started to become Tuesday rehearsal as well.”
The final nail in the coffin for Sheen’s tenure with Two and a Half Men came when in February 2011 he called on the Alex Jones Show radio program to publicly criticize Lorre.
“I think for the past ten years, I don’t know, I’ve effortlessly and magically turned your can into pure gold,” he said at the time.
“And the gratitude I get is that this charlatan chose not to do his job of writing.”
The public beating came just one mom after Sheen went through a rehab program at his home, his third attempt at sobriety in a year.
Sheen was eventually fired from Two and a Half Men a month later and replaced by Ashton Kutcher, with the following statement: “After careful consideration, Warner Bros. Television has terminated Charlie Sheen’s services on Two and a Half Men effective immediately.”
Gabriel Solana, Sheen’s personal makeup artist, claimed the actor struggled with the sitcom’s stagnation
The actor’s private life began to affect the cast and crew, with his stand-in showing up for rehearsals
in December 2018, Sheen, who has also quit smoking, celebrated one year of sobriety
Years after his shock departure, Sheen revealed to Matt Lauer on the Today Show that he had been diagnosed with HIV.
“I wish I could blame it on that,” he said of his spiral into addiction. “That was more of a (steroid) rage. This followed.”
Sheen would continue his feud with Lorre for several more years. He still had a problem in 2017 when he described the writer as “the most miserable damn douchebag” during an appearance on the Kyle And Jackie O show.
But four years later, Sheen admitted that there were “55 different” and better ways to handle his firing from Two and a Half Men, without calling Lorre a “turd” or “clown.”
In a dramatic turn of events, it was announced earlier this year that the pair would team up for the upcoming comedy series How to Be a Bookie, their first project together since Two and a Half Men.
The show follows the “experienced bookie” (Sebastian Maniscalco) as he “struggles to survive the looming legalization of sports gambling, increasingly unstable clients, family, co-workers and a lifestyle that has him tossing and turning all over Los Angeles.” ‘.
Sheen has since managed to turn his life around, celebrating one year of sobriety in December 2018 – much to the surprise of his makeup artist.
“He’s all clean today,” Solana said. “He doesn’t even smoke cigarettes… I never thought he would.”