The makers of America’s most popular comedy show acknowledge, possibly with some relief, that it will be difficult to replace Charlie Sheen, whom they fired on Monday, citing his “dangerously self-destructive conduct”.
Executives at CBS and Warner Brothers are reluctant to abandon Two and a Half Men, their highest-earning show, which was scheduled to run for at least another 32 episodes.
Several men have been suggested as contenders who might be equal to the task of filling in for Sheen. They include Woody Harrelson, Jeremy Piven and Jerry O’Connell, yet the actor Rob Lowe has been named as the overwhelming favourite.
Reports suggested yesterday that Chuck Lorre, the producer, had held talks with Lowe, a friend of the Sheen family, who appeared with Sheen’s father, Martin, in The West Wing.
John Stamos, another television actor, has also been touted as a possible replacement, although he denied the reports on his Twitter blog. “Contrary to the rumors, I am not replacing charlie sheen on two and half men,” he wrote last month.
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The celebrity website TMZ cited sources who suggested that Lowe may also decline the offer out of a reluctance to offend Sheen, his longtime friend, who launched another tirade against Mr Lorre, the show’s producer, on Tuesday. “I see you, you little worm! I see you,” he declared, in a fresh episode of his online show Sheen’s Korner.
He offered a similarly frank critique of executives at Warner Bros and CBS, which produced and broadcast Two and a Half Men, claiming that “canned slabs of jaundiced gorilla pelt fill the plates of those fools and clowns and nabobs. Oh how they once begged to attend my perfect banquet in the nude. Now they just beg for the keys to my gold”.
Earlier in the day Bree Olson, a porn actress with whom he has been living, appeared in a court in Indiana accused of drink driving. Asked as she left court what was next for Sheen, she said that she could not predict the future.