Chuck Lorre

World Screen Weekly, August 09, 2007

Co-Creator & Executive Producer

Two and a Half Men

When 24 returned to FOX’s schedule at the beginning of this year, industry watchers were anxious to see who would win the competitive 9 p.m. slot, where the veteran drama was going up against NBC’s freshman science-fiction hit Heroes. In the end, the winner was CBS with the sitcom Two and a Half Men. Heading into its fifth season, the series is the most-watched sitcom in the U.S. and frequently ranks in the top 10 of all network shows. It’s a rare feat for a comedy these days, and the series was rewarded this summer with seven Primetime Emmy nominations, including one for outstanding comedy series.

On how he has been able to keep the series fresh over the years, Chuck Lorre, co-creator and executive producer, says: “I love the characters and I love the relationships between the different characters, and that extends to the cast themselves. We have this amazing cast and it continues to be a great deal of fun to write for them because they can do anything.”

Indeed, the show’s cast gained significant favor with the Emmys this year. Charlie Sheen received his second nomination for outstanding actor and nods also went to Jon Cryer for supporting actor and Conchata Ferrell and Holland Taylor for supporting actress.

The series stars Sheen as Charlie Harper, whose bachelor lifestyle is interrupted when his brother Alan and nephew Jake move into his Malibu beach house. Lorre says that he and co-creator Lee Aronsohn wanted to create a show that featured “the lives of men. The real trigger was how a young boy would impact a decadent character. And there was a lot more to it. Jon Cryer plays Job for us, the Biblical Job, a guy who is very much doing the best he can to be a decent honorable citizen and father and brother and civilian and he’s punished mercilessly for it. We also discussed, can we explore how they became the kind of men they are? [We did that] by creating the character that Holland Taylor plays. What kind of toxic upbringing makes one guy fear commitment and another grab hold of [relationships] and strangle them to death? We introduced the mother character in the pilot because it seemed like a good way to get to understand who these men are.”

While the show is about men, Lorre concedes that attracting male viewers is challenging: “We’re well aware of the competition. Any given Monday night Two and a Half Men competes with NFL Football, Heroes, 24, probably other stuff I’m not thinking of, game shows and whatnot. That’s just television, that doesn’t include all the things you could be doing with a computer, a book, or a woman, and maybe even meeting with family. So there’s a great deal of things to do and we have to offer something remarkable in order to ask people to give up a half-hour of their time.”

Lorre adds, however, that he doesn’t spend too much time thinking about ratings. “It’s out of my control, who’s watching the show. The only thing that is in my control, and then only vaguely in my control, is telling good stories about characters that we care about.”

And for Lorre, those stories need to be told in a way that will “elicit laughter” from viewers. “I wouldn’t want people to watch our show and turn to one another and go, ‘That was very amusing,’ or ‘My that was clever! What an interesting turn of phrase! Gosh, I didn’t see that coming!’ You have to laugh out loud and that’s not a voluntary response. It’s something that has to bypass normal thought mechanisms.”

Lorre is now looking to replicate the success he’s had with Two and a Half Men with The Big Bang Theory, set to air on CBS on Mondays at 8:30 p.m. Lorre says the comedy “is an effort to tell a story about remarkable, brilliant people who can and possibly will change the world. Bill [Prady, co-creator of the show] is very much of these people. I am not. When we’re writing it, I am constantly asking him to explain stuff to me. I was fascinated with the idea that we could create a show about people that are extraordinary. The comedy, God willing, comes from their inability to deal with things we take for granted, starting with women. It’s not that your average intelligent man has any clue, but it’s even more difficult for these characters. They’re very much on the outside looking in. And we’re also trying to break up the stereotypes—we keep getting lumped in with geek and nerd comedies and that was not our goal. A geek is not a character. The word doesn’t tell you who the man is.”

As he gears up for the show’s launch, Lorre says he’ll be attempting to keep his mind off of fall-season-launch jitters, when producers wait to hear if their shows will get a full-season order. “That’s the kind of thing you try and take your eyes off of. Do I like these characters? Do I love their relationships? Am I laughing at their journey? That’s the only stuff I can deal with. When I start looking at the big picture I tend to fold up into a prenatal ball and weep. How long a show is going to be on. When it’s going to be on. Who will watch it. That’s too much!”

—By Mansha Daswani