“The following is a true story. Except for cutting the boring shit and making up a bunch of stuff, this really happened.”
So opens Sex, Drugs and a Sitcom, a wild TV pilot script written by überproducer Chuck Lorre concerning the tumultuous time he spent steering the ship at Two and a Half Men. The sequence starred, after all, Charlie Sheen, then one of many highest-paid actors on TV, earlier than he was fired in 2011 after publicly attacking Lorre, launching antisemitic insults and calling him a “turd” and a “clown.”
The script, obtained by THR, is dated June 15, 2022. According to a supply, Lorre shopped it round city however didn’t set it up — although there’s little doubt it dropped a number of jaws with its raucous, no-holds-barred account of what (presumably?) went on behind the scenes.
After opening with a fired-up Sheen being interviewed by Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today — a chyron identifies Lauer as “NBC News anchor, back when he was still getting laid at work” — the pilot then goes again in time “nine years before it all turned into a septic clusterfuck” to inform the story of how Two and a Half Men got here into existence.
Casting would’ve been attention-grabbing on condition that the pilot’s real-life characters embody a bevy of stars (in flashback scenes) from such earlier Lorre sequence as Roseanne, Cybill, Grace Under Fire and Dharma & Greg, plus business figures like former Warner Bros. Television chairman Peter Roth (described as a hugger) and ousted CBS boss Les Moonves (“the most powerful man in television and a naughty, naughty boy,” per a chyron).
CBS / Courtesy Everett Collection
It’s not identified who Lorre would’ve needed to play himself, although onscreen textual content on the finish makes it clear how he needs to be characterised: “In this telling of the story, Chuck Lorre is portrayed as witty and sympathetic. There is another version where he’s arrogant and insecure. Somebody else can write that one.” End scene.
Neither WBTV nor Lorre offered a remark at press time.
This story first appeared within the Nov. 21 challenge of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click here to subscribe.
