Chuck Lorre ‘had a blast’ with Charlie Sheen on ‘Bookie’: ‘Very meaningful to both of us’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
“A great deal of humility has to be practiced when you’re doing a comedy,” declares Chuck Lorre about ensuring every joke lands as intended, even in the relative vacuum of a single-camera comedy that doesn’t have the benefit of a live studio audience enjoyed by the multi-camera comedies Lorre is so renowned for. “When there’s no audience, you’re going entirely on your judgment and you don’t have any feedback. I suppose I could say that after 30 odd years of working in front of an audience, the audience is in my head and I can have a sense that something’s going to not work. I was going to say die a horrible death, but that seemed a little dramatic,” he laughs. “But you do get a sense of it. It’s such a fragile thing, comedy. It’s surprising something you think is just a guaranteed wonderful, wonderful comic moment can fail and if you’re too full of yourself, you’re in for a shocking surprise! The audience doesn’t care what you think.” We talked with Lorre as part of Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” Q&A event with 2024 awards contenders. Watch our exclusive video interview above.
SEE Exclusive Video Interview: Sebastian Maniscalco (‘Bookie’)
In “Bookie,” comedian Sebastian Maniscalco stars as Danny, a veteran bookie navigating his fast-paced L.A. life with his many unstable clients, family and colleagues. Lorre, a 10-time Emmy nominee (for “Two and a Half Men,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “The Kominsky Method”) co-created the eight-episode Max comedy with writer/producer Nick Bakay, which co-stars Omar Dorsey, Andrea Anders, Vanessa Ferlito, Jorge Garcia and Maxim Swinton, with four-time Emmy nominee Charlie Sheen (“Two and a Half Men”) featuring as himself in the series’ pilot and first season finale.
Despite Lorre and Sheen falling out in 2011, which stemmed from problems on the set of their CBS hit comedy, Lorre says it was a no-brainer to have Sheen guest on his new show, now that so much proverbial water was under the bridge. “When I reached out to him, I was in a good place. The nightmare that we went through was way in the rearview mirror. I went through many years where I couldn’t watch the show in reruns. It was too hurtful. And then that passed. I occasionally watch a show, a rerun, and laugh and enjoy it. And really admire the work. His work was impeccable and his work opposite John Cryer; It was a buddy comedy from heaven. When Nick and I wrote that first episode, we knew that we wanted to have a celebrity play themselves, who was a degenerate gambler. We had some ideas, but we didn’t really lock it down. And one night I just went, ‘oh, I know who’d kill this.’ I called Nick and I said, ‘I think this is Charlie, you know?’ And he said, ‘well, how are you with that?’ And I went, ‘I’m good.’ So I called him and he was in a terrific place in his life, raising a couple of kids and doing really well and he was gracious and kind and collaborative. We had a blast. It was, I think, very meaningful to both of us. I don’t want to speak for Charlie, but it was certainly very meaningful to me to put that all behind us and to go have some fun and try and make people laugh.”
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