EXCLUSIVE: Chuck Lorre is making the rounds to promote Sitcom, his memoir about hatching and EP-ing some of the biggest sitcom successes. The Long Island-born wannabe musician fell into the comedy game and was involved in the creation of The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, Young Sheldon, Bookie, Dharma & Greg, Mike & Molly, Mom and others. Lorre’s book includes those vanity cards after the closing credits, plus marked-up pilot scripts from Two and a Half Men, The Kominsky Method and The Big Bang Theory.
While helping to create stars of the likes of Jim Parsons, Melissa McCarthy, Allison Janney and others who handled sudden fame and riches well, much of the memoir’s propulsive narrative focuses on the difficult stars who used sudden fame to become narcissistic and make life unnecessarily hard for those around them.
DEADLINE: I’ve mostly covered the film business, where writers are often treated as disposable and directors rule. I always thought that writer/creator producers like you ruled the TV business, until I read your description of the terrible behavior you had to endure at the hands of Roseanne, Tom Arnold, Cybill Shepherd, Brett Butler, Charlie Sheen and a few others. Clearly they held the power.
CHUCK LORRE: You’re absolutely correct that it is a writer-driven medium by necessity. Back in the day, you’d do 24, 25 shows in nine months. And especially the four-camera comedy, the cinematography is minimal. You have four cameras aimed at two people. There’s not a lot of directing going on other than performance, performance, performance. I think the very nature of the enormous amount of show you’re telling in a very short amount of time, it had to be writer-driven. There’s no other way it could have been done. But of course, writer-driven can be an absolute apocalyptic situation, as I’ve proved.
DEADLINE: Why does it seem from your book that these troubled souls flocked to you like moths to a flame?
LORRE: I don’t take it personal, Mike.
DEADLINE: It is such a recurring theme in your career, was there every any sense of, “why me?”
LORRE: Bad luck? I was thinking about this recently because I’m doing this book tour and getting asked a lot of questions about that stuff. And one of the things that seems clear in hindsight is the American dream of success, and particularly in show business. I think that there’s an implicit promise, or maybe a very overt promise, that that will make you whole, that it will fill up your heart and soul. And you’ll be happy and content. If someone is miserable and angry and frightened and paranoid and they become usually successful, wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, globally famous … they will be globally famous, wildly successful, miserable, angry, frightened people. It doesn’t resolve the fundamental discomfort in being a human being.
DEADLINE: You kind of answered my next question. I came away feeling these were unhappy people who had the seeds of narcissism, and then those seeds got watered and fertilized by tons of money. Is that too simplistic a way to explain how these people got into behavior and power-grabbing that probably now might have them looking back and going, “Did I have to be that hard on the people working around me?“
LORRE: I would presume you’re right. But the other side of that story is that I’ve worked with people who are grounded. Loving, caring, good, decent people, family people who’ve enjoyed incredible success and they remain good, honest, professional, talented, loving family people. So I think the magic trick is success. I’ve seen this over and over again. It is a cultural thing. I hate to get pedantic about it, but I think we’re taught this in Western culture — that if you succeed, you’ll be happy. You will experience happiness. There’s no question about it. I think it’s ridiculous to denigrate success. That’s not the issue. The issue is, does it solve a dilemma of insecurity and fear and all the things that keep you up at night? It doesn’t. It just doesn’t. I wish it did. It’d be great, but it doesn’t.
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DEADLINE: The benefit of a memoir is you look back at how you got where you are. Having come out the other side, what might you have done differently to arrest, or at least delay, the birth of these talented people who turn into power-wielding monsters?
LORRE: I don’t believe I have anything to do with the creation of monsters.
DEADLINE: What I meant is, could you have done more to arrest or delay that impulse in these folks?
LORRE: Given who I was back then, I did the best I could. I wrote Page 1 of this book, and it actually encouraged me to go ahead and keep writing. Page 1 of the book basically just lays it flat-out that I did the best I could given who I was at the time, and that was all I could do. So, what I could change, there’s nothing I could have changed, at the time. Wouldn’t it have been swell if I’d been a more evolved, mature human being? Sure, but that’s ridiculous. What happened happened, and I did the best I could. It’s important to always point out, I don’t carry around a lot of regret. Some stuff with my dad, but as far as this career is concerned, every misstep, every dumb ass decision I made, every poor choice, it led me to this place now.
And if I’m not grateful for what’s happened to me, there’s something wrong with [me]. I’m incredibly grateful for how my life played out and that involves being OK with the mistakes, the missteps, the poor choices, whatever.
DEADLINE: Two and a Half Men is sort of like my night light, my go-to as I unwind and fall asleep. I’ve seen every episode, multiple times. I find it so well crafted and written, and the cast was terrific. I had breakfast with Charlie Sheen, before he published his tell-all. He reminded me of the werewolf in the morning after a rampage, with blood on his face, wondering how the hell could this have happened? He seemed like he wanted nothing more than another opportunity to prove that the implosion shouldn’t be his epitaph. He recognizes he had the world by the tail and that he was really good at his job before he blew it with whatever substances he was ingesting. Now, key cast member Conchata Ferrell passed away, but let’s say the network came to you with a sequel. Charlie has escaped Rose’s Silence of the Lambs dungeon that was alluded to in the last episodes. He returns home and has to share the place with Alan and Walden. Bring back Jon Cryer, Angus T. Jones, Holland Taylor and everyone else, and you might get another couple seasons. What would it take to tempt you to return for another tour of duty?
LORRE: I can’t answer that question. I really can’t. I don’t know. I mean, to pursue that, I guess, a sequel or whatever you want to call it, if there’s a really powerful comedic locomotive, that’s the reason to do it. To do it for financial reasons? I think that would be a terrible mistake. It’d have to be, “Man, this is just too beautiful an opportunity to create a great comedy.” That has to drive that decision, not money.
DEADLINE: Watching those earlier episodes with Charlie to me is like watching Three Stooges shorts with Curly Howard. But it was unnerving to see Charlie go from the handsome Lothario to this gaunt-faced guy whose timing was off and whose voice grew gruff. Those drugs took a toll, and it was at a time he made you a focus of his rants in the media. You’ve got pressure from CBS chief Les Moonves to keep this thing going because the ratings are still high, and your star is insulting you at every turn. Is there a way you can describe that turbulent moment in your life?
LORRE: There’s two parts to that. One is, as it started its descent, I was in absolute denial. I just didn’t want to believe this thing was imploding. I was very purposely trying to believe that it was all going to be OK — very naive on my part, but that’s where I was at the time. That was the best I could do, to be in denial and keep the thing going, keep the show going forward and then hoping that everything would turn out all right. When it absolutely blew up, and I was getting attacked every day, it was infuriating. It was humiliating. It was really painful.
DEADLINE: Surprising?
LORRE: I never saw it coming. I didn’t understand what was happening. I understood to an extent that people complicate this story, but it’s just a story about addiction and alcoholism. It’s not really complicated. This shit will kill you. I don’t care who you are, how famous or rich you are or how talented you are. This is a death sentence. If you’re lucky, you climb out of it, but more often than not, it’s a death sentence. I’m very grateful that Charlie’s on the other side of this thing. We had a blast reconciling and working on Bookie [Sheen appeared in a couple episodes of the Sebastian Maniscalco sitcom for HBO]. It truly was a great experience to do that with him, after all that darkness.
DEADLINE: You’re tasked with replacing Charlie. Hugh Grant would have brought an intriguing dynamic. How close did you get with him?
LORRE: It absolutely was the real thing. And I was serious about it because I was very concerned that if I stepped aside, someone else would’ve taken over. I wasn’t willing to let that happen. I wasn’t willing to let someone else step in and take my job. So I was trying to make it happen with Mr. Grant, even to the extent when he said he couldn’t work in front of a live audience, I said, “Fine, no audience.” Which is 180 degrees from my belief that what we do is basically a bastardized version of theater. It belongs in front of an audience. But I was willing to literally do anything to keep it going, in order to please the powers that be and to not give it away. And yeah, all that stuff in the book is true, that he turned down 750 grand a week. And God bless the man — he decided it wasn’t him, and he walked away from an astronomical amount of money.
DEADLINE: You admired being turned down?
LORRE: Yes. That’s artistry. “No, this is not right for me as an artist.” Good for you, Mr. Grant.
DEADLINE: Why were you so steadfast about not giving up?
LORRE: There were like 150 people employed on that show, and by keeping it going, we kept everybody in play for four more years. And I think I mentioned this in the book. I remember one phone call with Mr. Moonves. I said to him: “We don’t have Charlie. Charlie’s gone. Hugh Grant has passed. I think we have to admit that we’re done. The show is over.” And he said, “Chuck, next fall on CBS there is going to be a show called Two and a Half Men. Figure it out.” He actually proposed that I meet with Ashton. Ashton Kutcher was beautifully adapted to this kind of comedy, and he was great to work with. He was a real gentleman, and he brought a lot of life back to a show that had gone through some serious darkness. He was a real healing presence as well as a really gifted actor.
DEADLINE: I’ve heard him discuss his entrepreneurial side that made him a ground-floor investor in things like Uber. It was understandable he might have seen the show as a distressed asset he could save.
LORRE: It went pretty smoothly. He was a terrific partner on this whole transition. Talk about a gung-ho actor, man. He was up for anything we asked him to do. He said, “All right, let’s try it.” He has a great sense of humor about himself. Looking back on those four years, 88 episodes with Ashton, this was a gift to everyone involved. To keep going, to keep working and have a good time. And then all the darkness was gone. There was no drama. There was no conflict. We were putting on a show in the hopes of making people laugh. It couldn’t have been simpler.
DEADLINE: You write that you saw the chemistry between Charlie and Jon Cryer. Was there a moment you saw this dynamic would work as well as it did and this wasn’t going to be a cheap knockoff of Charlie’s show.
LORRE: I can’t exactly tell you when I knew, but here’s what I did know: I had Jon Cryer, Holland Taylor, Conchata Ferrell, Angus T. Jones. I had this extraordinary cast, and an incredible writing staff, really deep, deep staff. And Ashton is a pro who absolutely understands the dynamics of domestic comedy, which is basically what this was. It didn’t require a lot of anxiety to put the show on. We actually proceeded to have a very good time for four more years, and I’m very grateful for it.
DEADLINE: One of the best anecdotes of misbehavior comes when you are working on Roseanne. Her boyfriend Tom Arnold becomes a writer/producer and complains that someone there stole his love letters and sold out his steamy relationship with Roseanne to the National Enquirer. Take us through the cracking of that case.
LORRE: I just remember being told that he hired a detective who probably solved it in about a day. The check was made out to Tom for 25 grand, as I recall.
DEADLINE: How do you learn to deal with such peculiar behavior? You know how to craft a show, and you have to endure distractions that don’t help make it better…
LORRE: You put your head down, you put your blinders on, and you go to work every day.
DEADLINE: You write harshly about Scientologist after you rejected that faith. When you ran Dharma & Greg, you got on famously with Jenna Elfman. When you approached her to do another series, she said as a Scientologist she considered you a suppressive person and she would not work with you. Your response to her was a four-letter word. How surprising was all that?
LORRE: I don’t think I handled that well.
DEADLINE: What would you have done if you had another shot at it?
LORRE: “Well, thank you for your consideration. Have a nice day.” But I got very angry. I thought about expectations. I was once told by a wonderfully smart lady that expectations are the building blocks of resentment. And my expectations there were not met, so I got angry.
DEADLINE: You posit that WGA strike of 2007-08 ruined democracy in this country by hatching reality programming and Donald Trump.
LORRE: A bit of hyperbole, but it brought about these enormously profitable, cheap-to-produce reality shows. It ultimately led to a show that I think under normal circumstances — when television was filled with shows like Cheers and all the Steven Bochco shows — they never found a cheaper way to pull an audience together and sell advertising. And that ultimately led to a show like The Apprentice, which probably would never have seen the light of day had it not been for that. The lesson was that reality is cheap, and it works. People will watch. You make something cheap, and you make more money. I presume, if you’re a television network, it’s attractive to be paying less for the product and sell it for the same amount. That’s the fiscal nonsense of it all.
DEADLINE: How perilous is the place sitcoms find themselves? And what are your go-to shows to watch?
LORRE: When I got started, there were probably 50 or more comedies on, every week. Now maybe there’s three or four. So that’s precipitous for me. That is an unbelievable decline. I got to be just deeply grateful that I got my shot when I did, when there was an opportunity to do this kind of storytelling. I lucked into that. That was just pure dumb luck that I stumbled into a business that was about to explode, during the ’90s with comedy. And as far as what I watch, oddly enough, I like to go home and watch dramas. I like to watch stuff I don’t do. I like to watch stuff that is not what I’m doing all day long. And so I’m a big fan of serialized dramas and miniseries and great films.
DEADLINE: Your go-to dramas?
LORRE: Furious. The Diplomat. I’m a big fan of Taylor Sheridan’s work. I think that’s extraordinary — well written, well cast, unbelievable production.
DEADLINE: He doesn’t get the Emmy love, but Sheridan wrote this last season of Lioness. I was struck by how, when you put great dialogue in the mouths of great actors during such tense scenes, it’s kind of beautiful.
LORRE: It’s just great stuff. Noah Hawley, his stuff, it’s just unbelievable to me. There’s writers and producers who, if their name’s on it, I’m watching because they’re just extraordinary. The explosion of platforms has created a lot of opportunity for shows we would never have seen otherwise.
DEADLINE: Even though the Big Bang Theory core cast bristled about taking pay cuts to fairly compensate Melissa Rauch and Mayim Bialik when they became regulars, you write wistfully about that show and the spinoff Young Sheldon.
LORRE: The 12-year run on The Big Bang Theory has to be at the top of the list of things to be grateful for. We started out with a cast of unknowns, for the most part. Johnny Galecki was known as a result of Roseanne and Kaley Cuoco from 8 Simple Rules. But for the most part, they were new faces. To watch them become globally famous over those 12 years was phenomenal and so well deserved. By and large, it was a really joyful experience to be part of that. I say in the book that if you want to know something about somebody, you have a better idea of who they are in success than failure. And I think everybody on The Big Bang Theory, with very little exception, handled that enormous success extremely well. And it’s really bewildering. It’s a hurricane when it happens.