feuds

Four New Reveals From the Letter That Fired Charlie Sheen

Just hours ago, Warner Bros. Television officially fired Charlie Sheen from Two and a Half Men, and TMZ has obtained the barnburner of a letter that WB sent to Sheen’s lawyer Marty Singer to justify his termination. “At the outset, let us state the obvious: Your client has been engaged in dangerously self-destructive conduct and appears to be very ill,” the eleven-page letter begins before recounting Sheen’s outlandish public behavior from the past two weeks (there’s even a ten-page addendum filled with links to the negative online coverage the actor has received). Still, it isn’t all rehashed information; here are four new details we learned from a close read of the letter.

There were disastrous sitcom tapings
Though Sheen claims he was ready for work even when he missed rehearsals, the letter cites his “inability to deliver lines” as a reason for the Two and a Half Men shutdown, and takes issue with how Singer portrayed the period leading up to it: “You claim that Mr. Sheen was turning in ‘brilliant’ performances during this time. Not true. As outtakes of the filming show, Mr. Sheen had difficulty remembering his lines and hitting his marks. His conduct and condition created substantial tensions on the set. Mr. Sheen conceded in one or more of his numerous recent interviews that he sometimes showed up to work after not having slept and needed to move his mark to accommodate his need to ‘lean’ on something, for balance.”

Sheen may have had vanity-card approval
Maybe Sheen was okay with Lorre’s vanity cards after all? Despite the fact that he’s since sniped at Lorre for tweaking him with statements like “If Charlie Sheen outlives me, I’m gonna be really pissed,” the WB letter says that “Mr. Sheen himself approved” several of the vanity cards cited by Singer.

WB chartered a plane for rehab
On January 28, Sheen told CBS president Les Moonves that he would go to rehab the next day, so WB “had an airplane waiting to take him to such a facility.” Instead, Sheen refused to leave his home, which he then christened the “Sober Valley Lodge.”

Sheen violated a morals clause
Both Sheen and Singer have argued that there was no morals clause in the actor’s contract, but WB says that one section of the document allows the studio to refuse payment “if Producer in its reasonable but good faith opinion believes Performer has committed an act which constitutes a felony offense involving moral turpitude under federal, state or local laws, or is indicted or convicted of any such offense.” The example of moral turpitude cited here is “furnishing of cocaine to others,” but one imagines the WB wouldn’t have to think very long to come up with at least a few more.

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Four New Reveals From the Letter That Fired Charlie Sheen