Top

Charlie Sheen Fired After 7 Years

March 7, 2012 by · Comments Off on Charlie Sheen Fired After 7 Years 

Charlie Sheen Fired After 7 Years, Throughout his recent rants about CBS, Warner Brothers and his own drug use, Charlie Sheen insisted that he was ready to return to work on the hit sitcom “Two and a Half Men.”

On Monday, Warner Brothers disagreed, firing Mr. Sheen from the show, claiming the actor’s “statements, conduct and condition prevented him from performing his essential duties.”

The company’s terse official statement read, “After careful consideration, Warner Bros. Television has terminated Charlie Sheen’s services on ‘Two and a Half Men’ effective immediately.”

With that, the studio took the unprecedented step of firing an actor from one of the highest-rated programs on television. Warner Brothers, which owns and produces the series, will decide about the future of the program at a later date, a spokesman said.

Neither Warner Brothers nor CBS would comment further on whether an attempt would be made to continue the show without Mr. Sheen. But one senior executive informed of the decision to fire Mr. Sheen said that the fact that the series was not canceled Monday was an indication that an effort was under way to produce another season.

Warner Brothers laid out its rationale for firing Mr. Sheen in a letter to his lawyer Martin D. Singer, which included an extensive recounting of what it called “dangerously self-destructive conduct” over the last several years on the show.

The letter, which was obtained by TMZ.com, said Warner, CBS, and the show’s executive producer, Chuck Lorre, had made “accommodations for the off-camera (yet very public) aspects of Mr. Sheen’s life.”

It cited the publicity surrounding his divorce and custody battle with the actress Denise Richards in 2007, and his arrest and subsequent guilty plea to a charge of assaulting his then-wife Brooke Mueller in 2009.

It also mentioned an episode in October 2010 at the Plaza Hotel in New York when he was accused of trashing a room and threatening a paid escort, and parties in Las Vegas and his home this year at which he was said to have consumed large amounts of cocaine and alcohol.

The Warner Brothers lawyer, John W. Spiegel, also cited the events of January and February, saying that Mr. Sheen’s public behavior, including his verbal attacks on Mr. Lorre, the show’s creator, and condition “so undermined the ability of Warner Bros. and Mr. Lorre to produce the show that suspension and termination were required.”

Specifically, the letter cited his “physical appearance, inability to deliver lines, inability to collaborate creatively with staff and crew, inability to work with the executive producers, inflammatory comments poisoning key working relationships, and frustration of the show’s creative environment by the public spectacle of his self-inflicted disintegration.”

Bottom