After he was fired from America’s most popular comedy show, Two and a Half Men, the actor Charlie Sheen outlined his new career plan to a business associate on Monday evening.
“My plan is the best plan in the room,” he said. “My plan is gold ... Walk into my plan and you are going to win. Winner, winner chicken dinner I don’t think so. Winner Winner Sheen dinner.”
His career as a mainstream comedy actor was over, his new career as a celebrity undergoing what appeared to be a prolonged break-down was beginning in earnest. He seemed convinced that it would be possible to make money out of his own downfall.
Others appeared to share his conviction. The head of a high definition cable network, HDNet, said he was in talks with Sheen for a new show. The producer of The Walking Dead, a show set in a post-apocalyptic world overrun with zombies, appeared to think that Sheen would fit in very well.
“Charlie, call us, we will totally make that happen,” the show’s creator, Robert Kirkman, told The Hollywood Reporter. He did not think that the part would require much acting. “[He] can play a car for all I care,” said Mr Kirkman. “He’s awesome.”
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He may not be able to match his previous earnings — a reported $1.8 million per episode of Two and a Half Men — but media analysts concurred that Sheen could profit for at least a month from his own spectacular decline.
“He is a living train wreck, and people are fascinated by that,” Mark Berman, senior television editor for the agency AdweekMedia told The Times yesterday. “He doesn’t stop talking, everybody keeps listening. This is what these broadcasters feed on, I could totally see him doing a reality TV show now.”
Sheen’s new Twitter account, which has gained more than two million followers since he launched it last week, will carry advertisements for products written in his own rather distinctive style by social media copy writers employed by Ad.Ly, a company that pays celebrities to endorse products on their Twitter feeds. The company’s highest earning celebrities can command $10,000 (£6,200) per Tweet.
Even the conversation with his associate, Bob Maron, in which he smoked and swore and raked a hand through his already dishevelled hair, was a potential money-spinner. It was being video-taped and would be uploaded on to the web as the third instalment of his new online show Sheen’s Corner, under the title Torpedos of Truth: Part 2.
“I’m smoking a cigarette and drinking something I won’t reveal unless they pay me,” he said.
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A photograph Sheen uploaded to Twitter brandishing a bottle of chocolate milk had led to the producer being inundated with orders.
Reports suggest that he intends to sell a range of merchandise, branded with phrases such as ‘Winning’ and ‘Tigerblood’, which he has uttered repeatedly in recent days. On Monday, after learning that he had been fired for “moral turpitude” and his erratic behaviour on the set of Two and a Half Men, he stood on top of a building in Los Angeles, brandishing what looked like a machete, declaring himself “Free at last” and swigging from a large bottle.
Was it ‘Tigerblood’? photographers wondered, and would it be available in stores? “Soon enough, my man,” he replied.