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Hugh Grant was moments away from replacing Charlie Sheen in “Two and a Half Men.”
Chuck Lorre, who co-created the hit series, writes in his new “Sitcom” memoir, out now, that the network was exploring a replacement at one point due to Sheen’s erratic behavior.
“Somehow Hugh Grant’s name came up,” he recalls in the book. “We met with him. He confided that he was terrified of working in front of a live audience. No problem, I assured him. I could get rid of the audience.”
Lorre notes that nixing a live audience would mean “canned laughs” but added, “F–k it. Clearly I had no moral compass.”
The “Notting Hill” star, 66, was offered the staggering sum of $750,000 an episode and a four-day workweek.
The “Big Bang Theory” honcho relates that he was told Grant “had a pen in hand and was about to sign the contract when he abruptly walked out of the room and became ‘unreachable.'”
Grant’s publicist did not reply for comment.
Eventually, someone on Grant’s team said Grant no longer wanted to star on the sitcom.
Production still wanted to replace Sheen, who was calling Lorre names on talk shows and online and proclaiming he possessed “tiger blood” and “Adonis DNA.”
CBS head Les Moonves suggested that Lorre meet Ashton Kutcher, 48, who was according to Lorre, “charming, funny, ridiculously handsome, and fascinated by all things tech.”
Lorre writes that Moonves’ refusal to let the successful comedy die ultimately added four years, “eighty-four trauma-free episodes” to “Two and a Half Men.”
Kutcher earned the eye-watering sum of $63 million, and Lorre gleefully penned an episode that saw Charlie Sheen’s character die by having a piano dropped from a helicopter and crush him.
Lorre, 73, also reveals that he had to fight to get Jon Cryer cast on the show.
In pre-production, CBS told the comedy maven they didn’t want to see Cryer, whom they considered the “death of comedy” because he’d been cast in several failed sitcoms and pilots.
Lorre’s casting agent ignored the directive and had Cryer read for the part, which he performed brilliantly.
The “Pretty in Pink” star was then called in to audition for Moonves, who sat with folded arms, “body language for ‘no f–king way.'”
Cryer killed it again, and Moonves grudgingly agreed to allow Cryer to be cast.